The Permanent Impact of Divorce on Children - Erica Komisar

1. 0:00 – 1:22

   Why is Erica’s Work So Controversial?

   1. CWChris Williamson0:00

      Why do you think your work is seen as controversial?

   2. EKErica Komisar0:04

      Well, a number of reasons. I think some of the things I talk about, even though they're truths, they're inconvenient truths. Um, you know, my first book was about the importance of attachment security the first three years and a mother's presence. And so I think originally when that book came out, um, it was perceived as a message, which it really wasn't, which was an anti-feminist message that women shouldn't work. That wasn't the message of the book at all. Um, rather it was a message about the importance of a, a mother or primary attachment figure's physical and emotional presence as much as possible in the first three years. And again, that's a sensitive message in a society that says work, work, work. Everybody should work, work, work, and no one should raise their own children. And so I think that's how I originally became controversial. I think I'm controversial in many ways. I think my most recent book is controversial in other ways. Um, my book on divorce, which-

   3. CWChris Williamson1:03

      Much less contentious topic.

   4. EKErica Komisar1:05

      It is, but it isn't, because the book actually makes the argument of, um, this idea of 50/50 needs to be looked at very carefully, that we are treating children like possessions in divorces. So that's, that's a sort of controversial idea.

   5. CWChris Williamson1:21

      Mm.

   6. EKErica Komisar1:21

      Um,

2. 1:22 – 4:19

   The Hidden Impacts of Divorce on Children

   1. EKErica Komisar1:22

      yeah.

   2. CWChris Williamson1:23

      I think many people assume that kids are quite resilient.

   3. EKErica Komisar1:26

      Mm-hmm.

   4. CWChris Williamson1:27

      From your clinical work, what do most adults misunderstand about what divorce does to kids?

   5. EKErica Komisar1:35

      So divorce is, we know, is universally not great for children. Um, it tests their emotional security, it tests their sense of permanence and trust in relationships. So, you know, one would never say it's good for children, and I certainly would never say it's good for children. There was a woman named Judith Wallerstein who wrote a book many, many years ago, decades ago, about how all divorce is terrible for children and no one should divorce. Meaning the implication is you should stay with your spouse, even though you don't get along with them, for the benefit of the children. But research that's come out, come out more recently says that, well, no, divorce is not good for children. But there are ways to mitigate how bad it is, and it's that in fact, chronic conflict, uh, intractable conflict for children-

   6. CWChris Williamson2:26

      Mm

   7. EKErica Komisar2:27

      ... is much worse. So to live with parents who hate each other. So the ideal being, uh, two parents who love one another, respect one another, are affectionate with one another, that's what's ideal for children. But if you can't have that and you have two parents who hate each other or who are in permanent conflict, that's actually shown to be worse for children's psyches than a good divor- divorce. So what I say is a good divorce is better than a terrible marriage.

   8. CWChris Williamson2:52

      Hmm, okay. Does that mean that divorce is costless if the marriage is sufficiently bad?

   9. EKErica Komisar3:00

      No, it's not costless. Um, it's still going to test children's sense of security. It's going to test, uh, their sense of permanence about relationships. These are things it will test. It will test their resilience. Um, one of the things I say in the book, which is controversial, is that you shouldn't divorce till your children are at least three years of age.

   10. CWChris Williamson3:20

       Hmm.

   11. EKErica Komisar3:21

       Uh, if you can help it, unless there's some kind of abusive situation going on. If there's physical abuse or sexual abuse, of course you should leave your spouse. Uh, that, that goes without saying. But if you're just not getting along, then if you can hold it and put your children first for the first three years, because we know that the first three years are the period of, you know, the greatest brain growth. So from zero to three, eighty-five percent of the right brain has grown by three years of age. Um, and so you wanna give your child as much stability and security and not having much conflict or stress in those years. So if parents can hold it for a few years... I mean, you were together, you loved each other at one point, you made this baby together. Hold it for three years. Let your child develop a sense of safety and security, um, and then if you have to divorce, do it after three.

   12. CWChris Williamson4:17

       Hmm.

   13. EKErica Komisar4:17

       Um, that's what I encourage people

3. 4:19 – 11:05

   How Stress Rewires a Child’s Development

   1. EKErica Komisar4:19

      to do.

   2. CWChris Williamson4:19

      Why does constant parental conflict damage children so deeply? What's it doing to a child's system and brain development?

   3. EKErica Komisar4:28

      Stress. So we know that stress isn't good for children's brains. Well, it's not good for adults' brains either, [laughs] but it's really not good for children's brains. So, you know, you could think of what's happening to the brain is it's, you know... The, the brain is being architected in those first three years, and stress changes the architecture of the brain. So there is the stress regulating system. So the amygdala is this tiny little almond shaped part of the brain that is probably one of the oldest, most primitive parts of the brain, and it is responsible for putting us into survival mode, uh, fight or flight. You know, it protects us. So we say that a little bit of stress, which produces a little bit of cortisol, can protect us, right? But a lot of stress, which is chronic, which children cannot, their brains cannot handle, actually changes the development of that brain, so that child later on can't deal with adversity and stress as well. Um, there's actually a researcher at Columbia University who talked about how, um... Think about, uh, that part of the brain that regulates stress. It's meant to be offline for the first year, which is why mothers wearing babies on their bodies and, uh, carrying babies around, and then for the next two years after that first year, having them close by keeps their buffer stress, keeps their stress levels quite low, introducing stress incrementally. And then after that three-year period, children can begin to integrate more and more stress. But if you overly expose them in the beginning, uh, you get an overactive amygdala that sets that baby into survival mode, and then that part of the brain sort of fizzles out. It's the best way I can put it. It sort of shrinks, shrivels up, and ceases to be functional in the future-

   4. CWChris Williamson6:15

      Hmm

   5. EKErica Komisar6:15

      ... to handle stress and adversity. So just basically not good for children.

   6. CWChris Williamson6:19

      What sort of person does that make in adulthood?

   7. EKErica Komisar6:22

      A person who can't deal with stress, a person who's anxious, who's depressed, who can't regulate their emotions. And that's what we have today. We have so many adults and young adults who can't regulate their emotions. So you could say that, uh, anxiety and depression and attentional issues are what, you know, everyone's calling ADHD, which, uh, isn't actually a condition. It's just a symptom of overexposure to stress. It's, it's being in the flight mode of stress.

   8. CWChris Williamson6:48

      ADHD is a symptom of overexposure to stress?

   9. EKErica Komisar6:51

      It is. It's, it's a hypervigilant amygdala. It's, it's when you're exposed to too much stress, more than you can handle, and you go into-- So, so you know what fight or flight mode is. It's, it's, it's our survival mode. So when we feel threatened or in danger, either our brains will go into, "Let me fight the predator that's chasing me," or, "Let me run." And so distractibility is the running part. It is the fleeing from something that feels threatening. And if you're in a chronic state of stress, then you're always in that state of flight, or you're always in that state of fight. Um, and so that, that's basically what, what it is. But those are, those are conditions of emotional regulation. What it means is that, um, children were overly exposed to stress in the beginning, and then the consequences of that are that they can't manage stress in the future.

   10. CWChris Williamson7:43

       So is it your opinion that much of the modern youth mental health problems can be laid at the feet of dysfunctional upbringings?

   11. EKErica Komisar7:53

       Yep. That's correct. Um, not all-- I mean, there's very little mental illness that is genetically connected. Um, schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, there's genetic precursors, but there's no genetic precursor for depression, anxiety, and ADHD.

   12. CWChris Williamson8:12

       There's no genetic precursor for those?

   13. EKErica Komisar8:14

       No. No, but there is a genetic precursor for a sensitivity gene. Um, and so what we found is a short allele on the serotonin receptor. So serotonin is necessary to pick up good feelings, but it's also a regulation gene. It helps to regulate things like excitement. And what we know is that there are some babies who are born more neurologically sensitive. That means they're more sensitive to stress, and their brains are going to be triggered into that fight or flight state more easily than other babies. Um, so if you ask anyone who has more than one child, the-- you know, you say it, "Do you have one child or two children, uh, maybe who cry more easily, who are harder to soothe, who you couldn't put down, who sort of clung to your body more, you know, who, who didn't sleep as well, you know, who had eczema and rashes on their bodies, who, who are more sensitive to f- the clothing that you put on them, or the smells in the air, or the sounds were too loud?" Um, a lot of those babies are what we call neurologically sensitive or more sensitive to stress. And what the research shows is that if those babies are given, uh, sensitive, empathic nurturing, if they're provided with a consistent physically and emotionally present primary attachment figure in the first year to three years, those babies-- it neutralizes that sensitivity gene, so those babies can be as healthy as a baby who's born without that sensitivity gene.

   14. CWChris Williamson9:42

       Mm.

   15. EKErica Komisar9:43

       But if that baby is overly exposed to stress, if you separate them from their primary attachment figure, if you put them into daycare, um, if you treat attachment security with very little respect, the respect that it deserves, then those babies, it exacerbates that sensitivity gene.

   16. CWChris Williamson10:02

       Is this what people mean when they talk about HSPs, highly sensitive people, or is that some term that's just been concocted out of nowhere?

   17. EKErica Komisar10:08

       It's concocted, but it's the i- it's-- uh, so I, I, I suppose they're connecting it to the, the, the genetic-- I don't know whether that term was invented when they found the gene, but the gene has been found for that.

   18. CWChris Williamson10:20

       Mm, mm-hmm.

   19. EKErica Komisar10:21

       And so we know that those babies who are not provided with that sensitive, empathic nurturing and that buffering from stress and that presence of their primary attachment figure, you know, babies are born neurologically fragile. They're not born resilient. They're not born tough. They're not born capable of handling stress. They're born incredibly neurologically fragile. And so I always like to say that babies, uh, have a fourth trimester, which isn't real because a trimester is three, right?

   20. CWChris Williamson10:50

       Right.

   21. EKErica Komisar10:50

       But it's that nine months after a baby is born, they're like marsupials. You know, I was just in Australia, and I gave a speech, and I said, "Babies are like marsupials. If we had pouches, that's how they should be on our bodies for the next year after they're born."

   22. CWChris Williamson11:04

       Mm.

4. 11:05 – 14:22

   Is Amicable Divorce Still Damaging?

   1. CWChris Williamson11:06

      What is it that's causing the issue then if physical and emotional closeness are what's important? What's the issue with divorce if it's done amicably?

   2. EKErica Komisar11:16

      So the problem is that divorce demands that-- well, at least today's divorce demands that, um, parents are treated with a certain amount of, I don't know, gender equality or 50/50. You know, this whole idea of fairness, you know? And, and the truth is that what's happened is quite a good thing, which is that fathers are now recognized as being very important to babies. Um, and they are, but they're important to babies in a different way than mothers if the mother is the primary attachment figure. If the father is the primary attachment figure, then he's the primary attachment figure. But for the most part, mothers who give birth to babies, who breastfeed babies, who nurture babies, they still are the primary attachment figures. And so if you take a baby who's breastfeeding and is, is in a state of attachment security, building that attachment security with the mother-And is securely attached to that mother. And now the judge comes in, who has no psychological awareness or sense, and says, "Right," like King Solomon, "Split this baby in half, 50/50. Ah, take the baby away from the breastfeeding mother, ah, who sleeps co-sleeping with the baby, and give the baby to the father three days a week." And now this baby's traumatized. This baby has just lost their entire sense, the, the person that is the center of their universe and the center of their security. And for what? Because of fairness? Because the father needs to have 50/50? So the idea being in the first three years, that baby needs the mother more than the father. That doesn't mean the baby doesn't need the father, but the, the baby needs the mother if the mother is the primary attachment figure more than the father. The cases that I've worked on where the children do the best are the cases where, or the families where the father has a tremendous amount of respect for that attachment security and doesn't think of his own personal needs or a sense of fairness or as if the baby is a possession. You know, the story of King Solomon is two mothers come in and say, each mother says, "This is my baby." They bring a baby in, and King Solomon says, "Well, you both can't be the mothers." And so he says, "Guards, come over here. Cut the baby in half, and you'll each get half of the baby." And one of the mothers steps forward and says, "No, don't cut the baby. Leave the baby alone. Give the baby to her." And King Solomon, in his wisdom, knew what he was doing. He said, "You're the mother." Not the selfish one, but the selfless one. So parents have a very hard time when they divorce for good reason, because they're in such incredible pain. It is such an incredibly painful thing to see parents go through. They're in such pain, they, they focus on their own pain and their own desires and their own needs and their own sense of fairness, rather than focusing on what's developmentally correct for babies.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:21

      Mm.

5. 14:22 – 22:13

   Why 50/50 Custody Might Not Be the Best Solution

   1. CWChris Williamson14:23

      A lot of courts push for 50/50 custody.

   2. EKErica Komisar14:25

      Right.

   3. CWChris Williamson14:25

      I've seen this.

   4. EKErica Komisar14:26

      Right.

   5. CWChris Williamson14:26

      What does the science say about that?

   6. EKErica Komisar14:29

      It says that I think the courts are not psychologically aware. I don't think they do it maliciously, um, but I think that, um, they do it because of this whole societal movement towards we're exactly the same, there's no difference between men and women. And, you know, the idea is that we're equally intelligent. Yes, we can do the same jobs. We should be equally admired and respected. But when it comes to nurturing, men and women have different nurturing hormones, um, that affect their behavior. Women produce a lot of a, a nurturing hormone called oxytocin, which is the love hor- euphemistically called the love hormone. And it makes women's behavior when they have a baby and they breastfeed, it makes them more sensitive, empathic nurturers. What does that mean? It means that they're very attuned to the distress of the baby. When the baby cries, they soothe the baby from moment to moment, and that emotional regulation is internalized after about a three-year period. So from moment to moment, if the mother is around, uh, most of the day for that baby and physically close to that baby, making skin-to-skin contact with that baby, that mother is emotionally regulating the baby. That's not in- internalized for about three years. Okay. Fathers, when they nurture their babies, they also produce oxytocin. It comes from a different part of their brain, and it, it has a different effect on their behavior. It makes them playful, tactile stimulators of babies. They tickle babies. They throw them up in the air. They, they, you know, roll around and roughhouse with them, which is really important for resilience building and separation. But you don't separate before you're attached. You have to attach. It's all about sequencing, right? So attachment security matters before separation. Um, so fathers throughout a baby's upbringing will play with the baby, and the mother will get hysterical and go, "Don't throw the baby up in the air like that."

   7. CWChris Williamson16:25

      Mm.

   8. EKErica Komisar16:25

      But it's actually a very important process, but it's also very important that the baby, when in distress, goes back to the mother.

   9. CWChris Williamson16:32

      Uh.

   10. EKErica Komisar16:32

       Right? If the father is just on his own with an infant and he's playing and the baby's in distress, now there's no mother to go back to. So it's very traumatizing for a baby to not have the balance of things. Um, and so I think the reason that... Oh, I suppose I should tell you about vasopressin. Vasopressin is the nurturing hormone of fathers. It's actually called the protective aggressive hormone, very self-explanatory.

   11. CWChris Williamson16:58

       Right.

   12. EKErica Komisar16:58

       But I'll tell you about a, an interesting study that was out of England, um, which is a mother and father lay in bed, um, and the baby cries, and the mother wakes up vigilantly to the baby's cries, but the father sleeps through the cries. But when there's a rustling of leaves outside the window, the father wakes up, and the mother sleeps through it, meaning fathers are much more attuned to predatorial threat. And that's what protective aggressive hormones do. We're just different. We're not the same in terms of our nurturing hormones which impact our behavior. Does that mean a father can't be a single father and nurture his child? Yes, he can, but he has to be taught because it doesn't come naturally to most fathers.

   13. CWChris Williamson17:40

       Yeah, that's so good that before the written word and in a time when maybe dads would have been killed before the baby was even born, w- who is around to teach a boy what it means to be a father in future? That has to be something that feels a bit more ingrained. I always think about this when I see dogs flicking their hind legs-

   14. EKErica Komisar17:58

       Yeah

   15. CWChris Williamson17:58

       ... after they've just been to the bathroom. But at, at no point was there a little pamphlet that was handed to them, and an equivalent is if you put boys, young boys in kindergarten, five to 10 years old or whatever, uh, if you put them in a, a yard and there's stonesPretty soon those stones are gonna wind up in the air.

   16. EKErica Komisar18:17

       Yeah.

   17. CWChris Williamson18:17

       There's just something-- and I remember as a kid, if there was something to throw, I would throw it.

   18. EKErica Komisar18:22

       Yeah.

   19. CWChris Williamson18:22

       No one taught me to throw it. No one had told me to throw it. It's just what I wanted to do. And whatever this is, some version of neurochemical predisposition pushing us toward an instinct, which over time evolution has found out, well, that's-- it's pretty adaptive. It's pretty good. This is gonna increase your chances of fitness or whoever is around you, it's gonna be pro-social, or it's gonna get you more status, kin selection, whatever it might be. Uh, it doesn't surprise me that that's the case. But I guess given that most children need a primary attachment figure, that runs almost counter to every custody discussion.

   20. EKErica Komisar18:58

       Yes.

   21. CWChris Williamson18:58

       Even the ones-- forget 50/50. Most custody discussions at least include some custody, and that means not custody for the primary caregiver, which is the mother, which baby cries, w-who are they gonna crawl to?

   22. EKErica Komisar19:14

       So again, I'm talking about the cases that I've helped with, the families I've helped through divorce, where the children have the best outcomes in terms of emotional security and attachment and resilience, are the ones where the father's made a lot of sacrifices. Meaning if you're gonna divorce in the first three years while your child is still developing attachment security, then the father should have as much access to that baby as he, as he wants. But when it comes to overnights and long periods of time away from the mother, that's just not good for babies. So that may be good for fathers in their minds, but in the end it's not good for fathers, 'cause if their babies end up having mental health issues, I've never known a parent who's happy if their child is not doing well. So, you know, what you think is good for you in the moment may not be good for your, for your child. So the cases where the father has said, "I'm going to-- we, we have to divorce because we really hate each other, and we can't live together, and the baby's only one," then the fathers who have, you know, taken a little bit on the chin and said, "You know what? You, you be the primary, uh, parent right now. I will come and go. I'll have-- I'll come and spend lots of time with the baby, but I won't do overnights until the baby's a little older." And mind you, when children get older, particularly in adolescence, um, and in the school years, there are times when they need their fathers more than they need their mothers, um, particularly little, little boys and, and adolescent boys. And so mothers also have to accept that there are times when fathers are needed more than mothers. But, but what we do know is that when parents can make sacrifices, when they're not self-oriented, but when they are capable of sacrificing, when they're capable of putting aside their own needs for the benefit of their children and making a divorce more child-centric, then children do better.

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6. 22:13 – 26:18

   Should Fathers Take a Back Seat?

   1. EKErica Komisar22:13

      Right.

   2. CWChris Williamson22:13

      The child-centric divorce-

   3. EKErica Komisar22:15

      Right

   4. CWChris Williamson22:15

      ... is a meme that could take hold. Isn't it strange? So much talk about absentee fathers, deadbeat dads, dads that sort of aren't a part of the picture, and yet if you're gonna take a neurobiologically developmentally informed approach, you actually a-almost need to program that in to a degree. Not that the father shouldn't be there, but that the father should be deprioritized. And I think this is what a lot of men, a lot of the men going their own way in men's rights movements is, have pushed back against family court saying, "This is unfair. I don't get to see my kids," so on and so forth. Now, I don't think the reason that they weren't allowed to see their kids is because of a neurobiologically informed approach-

   5. EKErica Komisar22:59

      No

   6. CWChris Williamson22:59

      ... to a child's development. I think it was much more of a discarding and a disregarding of the importance of fathers and of them as someone that should be considered when these sorts of conversations are happening. But it's an uncomfortable realization to come full circle twice, however many times around the horseshoe it is, to realize, oh, actually maybe that's what's best for the baby, and if my primary sense of happiness as a father is going to come from raising a happy baby-

   7. EKErica Komisar23:31

      Right

   8. CWChris Williamson23:31

      ... into a happy child, into a happy adult, I actually need to... The cultural meme needs to change so that I see this as an oddly, like, not glorious thing to do, but a, a, a worthy sacrifice.

   9. EKErica Komisar23:49

      Yeah.

   10. CWChris Williamson23:49

       And, and it's a challenge that no one's gonna give me that much sympathy for because the pattern matching is only half an inch away from being a deadbeat dad who's absent while mom's looking after... So yeah, but I go around every day. I go around for this time during the afternoon when I'm a- when I can, but I can't stay over. We're no longer together. It's difficult for me. I have to go through this thing. It's her house. That's what, you know... I-- These complicated custody schedules must be a nightmare. It must be super destabilizing for mom and dad and kid as well.

   11. EKErica Komisar24:17

       You know, the reason, I mean, there is such a thing as alienation, which is really problematic in divorces, and it does happen, and it happens when parents divorce under very contentious, uh, situations, very belligerent, contentious, hostile divorces where, um, you know, I always say in divorces it's rare that two people look at one another and go, "Yeah, let's, let's, you know, we'll call it quits together. We're on the same page." It happens, what we call amicable divorce. It's usually divorces are pushed by one person, so that means that there's always somebody being left-

   12. CWChris Williamson24:55

       Hmm

   13. EKErica Komisar24:56

       ... uh, or somebody who perceives as being left, and so that means that that person is in a tremendous amount of pain, and sometimes that hostility and that pain, uh, turn into vengeance, and vengeance can turn into alienation. So alienation does exist, so-

   14. CWChris Williamson25:11

       Wh- wh- what, how does alienation show up mechanically? What is it?

   15. EKErica Komisar25:14

       Well, basically, the term alienation legally is used to, to describe, um, an obstacle that's put in the way of either parent having a relationship with that child. And so look, there are mothers and/or fathers who create obstacles, either physical or emotional obstacles to their child loving the other parent. You know, either they badmouth the parent and, and are critical of the parent and say terrible things about the parent, or they don't allow phone calls to the parent or visitation to the parent, or if the parent misses visitation or is an hour late, the mother shuts the door. You know, so th- it does happen. Um, but I think what, what has happened is it's assumed that that's always happening, and it's not. I would say it's more rare cases where there's alienation. Um, I, I think parents just need to be educated about how if you're gonna get divorced, children aren't the ones who ask for it, and it's, you have to be very selfless in the process of divorce if you want your children to be well.

7. 26:18 – 30:52

   Is There Ever a Good Time to Get Divorced?

   1. CWChris Williamson26:18

      What happens after age three? I have to assume that a four or eight or 12 year old's parents getting divorced is not that much better. So what is the issue with older children, divorced parents?

   2. EKErica Komisar26:33

      So actually, there is a period of time that's more stable in development. So we know that there are unstable periods of development. I hate to call it that, but they kind of are. The brain is in a less stable situation, right? Zero to three, the brain is very unstable. It's, um, it's growing so rapidly, and it has certain needs for security, so it's, it's rather unstable. It's a very pl- what we call plasticity, a period of great plasticity. Um, another period of great plasticity is adolescence, so adolescence is from nine to 25. Starts earlier, ends later, and in young men, it really doesn't end till about 27. So what we know is that during those two periods of plasticity, the period of great growth, which is zero to three, and then adolescence, which is a period of great pruning. So imagine if you grew a garden, the first three years are like you grow your garden, and then the garden overgrows, and then you know that if you have a vegetable garden, if it overgrows, it's not gonna produce vegetables. So you have to prune the garden, so the pruning period is also very critical, and it's a period of great plasticity and vulnerability. We call it a critical period. Probably the two worst periods to divorce is zero to three and nine to 25. And what I say, I'd be a little... I'm gonna be a little generous and say, um, the worst period of adolescence to divorce in is about 11 to 14. It is the worst p- I say it's the worst period of anybody's life. It's middle school, and it is the most challenging, transitional, um, torturous period for children. They're physically developing. They're going through puberty. There's social drama. There's rejection and exclusion and teasing and bullying, and it's, it's terrible. And so if I were gonna say are there periods that are more stable in terms of development and brain growth, you would say probably from about six to about 11, if there's an ideal period to divorce, it might be that.

   3. CWChris Williamson28:40

      Never a good time to divorce, but if you're going to do it-

   4. EKErica Komisar28:42

      Never a good time to divorce, but if you have to do it, that's probably a good window. Um, you could also do it after 14. You know, it's a little more stable after 14. So adolescence is, uh, broken up into three periods, early adolescence, mid-adolescence, and late adolescence, so you, you kind of wanna get to late adolescence if you wanna divorce, and then I'm gonna say there's another period that's sensitive. I mean, it's a little like a landmine, right? 'Cause what I'm saying is try not to do it zero to three.

   5. CWChris Williamson29:14

      Feel like I'm playing divorce battleships with you.

   6. EKErica Komisar29:16

      But, but, but you know what? Developmentally, children are more sensitive at cert- See, no one ever talks about this, so this is maybe controversial to say that there are better times to divorce than other times. People think, these are all the myths, right? They think, um, oh, it's better to do it while the baby is little because they'll never know any better. Okay, then you're tearing apart attachment security. Oh, another myth. Oh, it's better to wait till they go to college, and just when they go to college, we'll divorce. When they go to college, we'll tell them, and we'll separate. When kids go to college, they are s- it's a transition that is so incredibly fragile, and they need to feel that they're tethered to something very secure to go out into the world and individuate. So there's two things. There's separation, which is physical separation, and then th- there's individuation, which is developing your identity as a separate person. And it is such a fragile period, so I say if you're, if you're gonna do it when, after they go to college, then wait till they finish college and they're launched. Wait a few years.

   7. CWChris Williamson30:22

      Hmm.

   8. EKErica Komisar30:23

      You know, so if you've waited this long, don't do it when they're 18. Wait till they're, like, 23, and they have friends, and they have a job, and they're more secure. But this idea that, you know, as soon as they go to college, they're, like, done. They're cooked.And it's, you know, like they're not cooked at 18. They're not cooked till they're 27.

   9. CWChris Williamson30:43

      Mm.

   10. EKErica Komisar30:44

       And so yeah, there are better times than-- I mean, there's no good time to divorce, but there are better times for children than other times.

8. 30:52 – 33:04

   How Divorce Shapes a Child’s Future

   1. CWChris Williamson30:52

      What is the impact on the future adult when divorce happens eleven to fourteen? We've spoken about the importance of the primary attachment figure, the fact that this is getting ripped away, regulation of emotions. That has to be a different mechanism. It's the same stimulus, parents splitting up, but it's got to be a different mechanism that's happening now. So what is the impact in what that person will be like in future?

   2. EKErica Komisar31:18

      Well, they're already more unstable in that period. So what you're trying to do is you're trying to help stabilize them in that period and provide them with a sense of security. So, you know, people hear attachment security, and they think it's only zero to three. In fact, attachment security is throughout childhood at different points. And so another point of attachment security is when your child is separating because you want to be as secure as possible. You want to give them a stable base, a platform from which to, um, experiment and explore being independent. But it's hard to do that if what you're coming back to is, are moving tectonic plates. And so really there are points at which children need a lot of stability to grow. So if you destabilize them at a time when they're already unstable, it's going to be very hard for them to find their footing. It may delay their demel- development. It may, uh, it may keep them in a somewhat regressed state. So some kids who, whose parents divorce at very critical periods of brain development, they kind of stay in a more regressed state. They don't keep developing. They ki- it's sort of like they get stuck-

   3. CWChris Williamson32:29

      Mm

   4. EKErica Komisar32:29

      ... in a certain period.

   5. CWChris Williamson32:30

      Why?

   6. EKErica Komisar32:31

      Um, because they, to, to continue to move in development, you need a certain amount of stability. And so they stay in a state of wherever they were traumatized, they get stuck there.

   7. CWChris Williamson32:43

      Mm.

   8. EKErica Komisar32:44

      Um, so to say that divorce is a trauma, it, it is a trauma. And what, what my book is trying to do is to help you to reduce that trauma, to mitigate that trauma, and make it as gentle and as sensitive and as the least traumatic situation you can make it for that child.

9. 33:04 – 34:57

   Boys vs Girls: Who Suffers More?

   1. CWChris Williamson33:04

      Who is affected more by divorce, boys or girls?

   2. EKErica Komisar33:09

      It's a good question. Um, funny enough, at different stages of development, it might be different, but boys are more neurologically sensitive than girls. Um, we know this from all the research that even from in utero, boys are more sensitive to cortisol, to the stress hormone.

   3. CWChris Williamson33:25

      Mm.

   4. EKErica Komisar33:26

      And, um, we see it in little boys who go into fight and flight so easily in school with behavioral problems and attentional issues. There's probably more little boys with behavioral problems and attentional issues than little girls. Um, but girls are also susceptible to stress, particularly in adolescence. I mean, one of the things that we know is that girls' brains are very hypervigilant to criticism of any kind. Um, it's why social media is so bad for girls.

   5. CWChris Williamson33:56

      Especially during that eleven to fourteen range.

   6. EKErica Komisar33:58

      Yeah. Self-consciousness and, um, criticism that they, they exaggerate in their minds. Um, and so, you know, at different stages of development, it's different. But what we do know is that little boys are more prone to things like autism, to behavioral issues, to attentional issues, um, and all of those are... You know, autism is, um, a developmental condition that's, that is, goes back to being in utero. But there is some research to try to connect cortisol to autism. Um, and the idea is not that it causes autism, but it may be the, one of the things that can trigger the gene and turn it on. Um, so we know that boys are very, very neurologically sensitive. So I would say probably boys even more than girls, but at certain d- periods of development, particularly adolescence, girls can be very, uh, very susceptible as

10. 34:57 – 42:02

    Is Separation During Pregnancy Dangerous?

    1. EKErica Komisar34:57

       well.

    2. CWChris Williamson34:57

       What about separation during pregnancy? What's the impact of that?

    3. EKErica Komisar35:03

       You don't want the mother to be under stress. So what we know from the research is that cortisol is transmitted to the baby. And again, as I said, there's some research that's going on, um, trying to connect what cortisol does to the baby's developing brain. So if a mother is stressed out in her pregnancy, either because of a divorce or because of a work situation or because a parent's dying or, um... There's a lot of research now going on about how that affects the baby in utero. So the-- I'll, I'll leave it at that, to say it's not good for the mother-

    4. CWChris Williamson35:41

       Mm

    5. EKErica Komisar35:41

       ... but we know it's definitely not good for the baby.

    6. CWChris Williamson35:43

       Well, presumably the same thing is true of women who need to keep on cranking their careers right up until-

    7. EKErica Komisar35:48

       That's right

    8. CWChris Williamson35:49

       ... the moment that they give birth.

    9. EKErica Komisar35:50

       That's right.

    10. CWChris Williamson35:51

        Yet no one around the office really thinks all that much, "Well, I, I'd better not push to hit the sales target this quarter because Suzanne is pregnant." So w- we, we have a business, and you're supposed to be here. And also, there's a sense I think that a lot of women have of, uh, they don't want to be seen as fragile. They don't want to be seen as a diva. They don't want to have the accusation of, "Oh, here we go. The estrogen's on the line, and no one's, no work's gonna get done, and she's gonna be crying in the bathroom all day." So I think pushing through the normal discomforts of everyday work, which when you actually think about it, when you think about what even a relatively unstressful jo- uh, somebody that's a gardener-

    11. EKErica Komisar36:32

        Right

    12. CWChris Williamson36:32

        ... right, which I, I, I think of as probably being a little bit more sedate than someone that's a salesperson, even that, there's traffic on the way to work, and you're trying to get in and out, and there's some so- come, some conflict, and the boss has changed, and the new guy that's just come in, he's a bit of a dick, and-All of these little insults that happen. That's not to say that there wouldn't have been this ancestrally, but given that we're trying to design an environment that's really great for mom and baby and then dad as a part of that, uh, yeah, the, the fact that-- what's the mandatory mat leave in America?

    13. EKErica Komisar37:05

        [chuckles] I was gonna say, um, do you wanna know what my wish list is or do you wanna know the reality? 'Cause there is no maternity leave. Um, we have something called the Family Leave Act, which, um, means that you can't be fired for three months, but you don't get any pay. So there is no federal paid leave in our country. None. State by state, like New York State, I believe now gives three months of paid leave at minimum wage maybe, but it's not very much. But that's state by state. But there is no federal paid leave. And then it's contingent upon your employer's good graces if they decide to give you six weeks or three months. But there's-

    14. CWChris Williamson37:48

        Totally discretionary

    15. EKErica Komisar37:49

        ... there's-- totally discretionary. So I, I call us-

    16. CWChris Williamson37:53

        That is fucking barbaric.

    17. EKErica Komisar37:54

        I, I-

    18. CWChris Williamson37:54

        This country is mad.

    19. EKErica Komisar37:54

        Yes, it is bar-- it is. I call it the most uncivilized country and the country that pays lip service. So this is my frustration. The country that pays lip service to mental health-

    20. CWChris Williamson38:06

        Mm

    21. EKErica Komisar38:06

        ... talks a lot about mental health and children, and we care, and we love families, and it's all a bunch of bullshit, because if you really cared about mental health and you really cared about children and you really cared about families, you would have twelve to eighteen months of paid leave. I just came back from Australia where I have probably had more influence in Australia and the UK in terms of policy than in America, and I'm American.

    22. CWChris Williamson38:33

        [laughs]

    23. EKErica Komisar38:34

        Uh, I live here, but, um-

    24. CWChris Williamson38:36

        Yeah

    25. EKErica Komisar38:36

        ... nobody wants to listen to me here. You know, um, the Democrats see my messaging as anti-feminist, and the Republicans see my message as too expensive. And so-

    26. CWChris Williamson38:48

        [laughs]

    27. EKErica Komisar38:48

        ... I am just stuck in no man's land. I am in no man's land.

    28. CWChris Williamson38:52

        I'm with you.

    29. EKErica Komisar38:53

        Until the day I die-

    30. CWChris Williamson38:53

        I'm with you, Erica. Don't worry.
11. 42:02 – 50:47

    Why Do Children Blame Themselves?

    1. CWChris Williamson42:02

       You talk about divorce as something that children experience almost like a death in the family. What's being lost psychologically?

    2. EKErica Komisar42:11

       So when we, when we have, again, another politically incorrect thing or maybe politically correct thing to say-

    3. CWChris Williamson42:19

       This is a safe space, Erica

    4. EKErica Komisar42:20

       ... it's better to have two parents. It's better to have a mother and father because they serve different functions. But as, as they say in the UK, better to have an heir and a spare, right? So the idea that you have two parents means that if you lose one, you have another. But the concept is when you have a nuclear family, when you have two parents, you're under the illusion that it's a safe nest, that it is a safe, stable environment in which to grow up, and that stability provides you with the emotional security you need to develop in a healthy way.When that sense, that illusion, you know, there is an illusion because there's no permanence in life, right? I mean, your parents could die, they could get sick, they could, you know, get hit by a bus. You know, I mean, there's no permanence, but we're born with a sort of a need for that illusion of permanence. Um, and in fact, people with very healthy defenses, me included, with everything that's going on in the world, as you know, um, which could be crazy making, I-- my defenses help me not to obsess over it or focus on it because I can stay optimistic. My resilience allows me to cope with the adversity of the world. It's, it's like having shock absorbers right on a... It's... And, and so it's that sense of stability and permanence. When you divorce that permanence is the children are disillusioned in a way before they're ready. I always say every, every child is born with the need for a sense of omnipotence in their parents. They need to believe their parents-

    5. CWChris Williamson43:59

       They can do anything

    6. EKErica Komisar44:00

       ... are perfect.

    7. CWChris Williamson44:01

       Yeah.

    8. EKErica Komisar44:01

       They can do anything. They'll protect them. They're, um... Yeah. And so I always tell this story. My husband, when he was a little boy, um, his father always drove, was more traditional. His mother never drove when the father was in the car, and he would sit in the back and he said, "I always felt like my father knew every road on every map in the whole world." That's what childhood is, is a sense of feeling protected and as if your parents are bigger and bigger than life characters. When they divorce, you see the imperfections of your parents, and you start to see them as human before you're ready, but also the impermanence of relationships and the lack of trust, right? So then you no longer necessarily trust in the permanence of those connections, of those romantic connections. So, you know, many kids from divorce, uh, have trouble trusting in the permanence of, of marriage and connections later on.

    9. CWChris Williamson45:01

       Right.

    10. EKErica Komisar45:02

        Um, not all. So the reason I wrote this book is how do you, how do you help them? The way you talk to them, the way you treat each other, the way you care about each other as a divorced couple, the way you work together and collaborate and cooperate and communicate, that's going to determine, you know, that you can put them first and sacrifice your desires and needs for fairness and put them first. All of that is going to dictate whether that child in the future can see relationships as trustworthy.

    11. CWChris Williamson45:38

        Isn't it crazy the idea of fairness, that that needs to be put to one side, that there is something unfair to the parents that is adaptive for the kid, that's good for them, that's good for their, their upbringing? I think a lot of children blame themselves for their parents' divorces.

    12. EKErica Komisar45:52

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson45:53

        Why do you think that's such a common pattern?

    14. EKErica Komisar45:55

        It's, it's magical thinking. So children who are very young, um, there's a great commercial on television. A, a little boy is in a Darth Vader outfit, and he's got a, a, a, a wand or whatever it's called, a, a lightsaber, and he has-

    15. CWChris Williamson46:11

        [chuckles] Fucking wand.

    16. EKErica Komisar46:12

        Yeah. [laughing] A lightsaber.

    17. CWChris Williamson46:16

        Darth Vader going, "Expelliarmus."

    18. EKErica Komisar46:17

        [laughing] A lightsaber.

    19. CWChris Williamson46:20

        Yeah.

    20. EKErica Komisar46:20

        And he flashes it towards his car, the car- the family car.

    21. CWChris Williamson46:24

        Hmm.

    22. EKErica Komisar46:24

        And the father is behind with the, the remote control, and the father presses it, and the little boy goes, "Oh my God, I turned it off with my lightsaber." That's magical thinking. Magical thinking is something children have when they're very little and they outgrow, which is the belief that they are the center of the universe. It's a good thing. Um, we're born... If our parents focus on us as, as if we are the center of their universe, then we believe that we are the center of the universe, and that gives us a sense of steadiness and stability and security from which to develop. We outgrow magical thinking, where we feel we're in control of everything, but it helps us to feel secure when we're little. So if something bad happens to our parents when we're angry at them, like if your father or mother get into a car accident and die, let's say, when you are really angry at them because they didn't give you that toy or, you know, and you have terrible fantasies and thoughts as a child that you wish they would die or, you know, which aren't so terrible, they're just fantasies-

    23. CWChris Williamson47:32

        Hmm

    24. EKErica Komisar47:32

        ... and that parent actually does die, that child then feels responsible for that death. That's magical thinking. So basically, they believe they control, uh, what's around them. So it's very common for children to believe that they are responsible for the breakup of their parents. And so that's one of the things in the book that I talk about. How do you talk to children so you, uh, disavow them of those illusions that they are not responsible, that, um, you know, that you will always love them? Because again, that, that destruction of that sense of permanence in a relationship and that breaking of trust, children can easily understand parents' breakup as something parents could do. If, if parents can leave one another, then can't they leave them as well?

    25. CWChris Williamson48:19

        Hmm.

    26. EKErica Komisar48:20

        And so there's a lot of things that parents need to consider when they talk to their children, and there is a way to talk to children about a divorce.

    27. CWChris Williamson48:28

        Is there a sense as well, like how a lot of attachment wounds from early childhood get replayed in adult relationships, that if I can redeem myself in this situation, I will fix the wound that existed before-

    28. EKErica Komisar48:40

        Absolutely

    29. CWChris Williamson48:40

        ... that sort of classic loop. Is there something similar to that going on with the magical thinking from the kids that if I caused it, I can fix it?

    30. EKErica Komisar48:50

        Yeah.
12. 50:47 – 52:25

    Why Divorce Feels Like Grief For Children

    1. CWChris Williamson50:47

       What are the typical stages that children go through emotionally during a divorce?

    2. EKErica Komisar50:52

       It's, it's the same stages any mourning process. Think of it as grief. They go through the same Kubler-Ross. I always say grief is grief, mourning is mourning. Uh, it's a death, and so when, when someone dies, you go through the disbelief and you go through the sadness and you go through the anger and you go through the acceptance. Um, and the problem is if your child gets stuck, or if you as a parent, as an adult, while you're going through a divorce, get stuck. I've had patients who've gotten stuck for dec- a decade in grief, meaning they get stuck in anger, or they get stuck in sadness and despair, where they can't-- You're meant to move through grief. Um, so I'm Jewish, so we say, you know, mourning is a year. You know, uh, from this, from the moment someone dies, we don't unveil the stone. We don't take a cloth off the stone. We don't put the stone up, actually, for a year. So it's, it's a year, but we have a year to go through the process, right? But then we're meant to unveil the stone and move on with life. Um, what's happening is that people are holding on. They're getting stuck, like, almost like a scratch in an old LP record. They're getting stuck at certain stages of the grief and mourning process.

    3. CWChris Williamson52:09

       Mm.

    4. EKErica Komisar52:10

       And they'll either get stuck in the depression or the disbelief or the anger, but they s- many don't get to the acceptance stage. And children also aren't getting to the acceptance stage. They're getting sort of stuck in one stage of grief or another.

13. 52:25 – 54:26

    The Best Time to Break the News

    1. CWChris Williamson52:25

       How should parents tell their kids if they're divorcing?

    2. EKErica Komisar52:28

       Together, um, emotionally balanced, so if you are hysterical or your partner is, that's not the time to do it. To do it in a way that is emotionally regulated, um, to do it in a way where you agree on what you're gonna tell the children. Um, don't do it before a major exam. Be sensitive. You know, this is like [chuckles] the fact that you have to tell people, "Please be sensitive." Don't do it at a time when your children are very stressed at school or stressed socially or about to play a big game or a big concert or, you know. Don't do it at a major holiday. Don't do it at Christmastime. I'm not Christian, but don't do it at Hanukkah. Don't-- Because that holiday will forever be associated with that divorce, right? They'll never be able to love-

    3. CWChris Williamson53:18

       Oh, that's such a good point

    4. EKErica Komisar53:18

       ... Christmas again.

    5. CWChris Williamson53:19

       Yeah.

    6. EKErica Komisar53:19

       Uh, don't do it on their birthday, 'cause they'll never-

    7. CWChris Williamson53:22

       [laughs] Oh my God

    8. EKErica Komisar53:22

       ... like their birthday. Um-

    9. CWChris Williamson53:23

       How much of a dick do you have to be as a parent?

    10. EKErica Komisar53:26

        You'd be surprised.

    11. CWChris Williamson53:27

        Happy birthday-

    12. EKErica Komisar53:28

        Um, yeah

    13. CWChris Williamson53:28

        ... also.

    14. EKErica Komisar53:29

        Yeah. Yeah. And, you know, so I suppose you could do it on vacation when you have a whole week to spend together and process and go for walks and talk about things and, um-

    15. CWChris Williamson53:42

        I suppose that's not gonna tether it to some geographical location the kid might have to go back to-

    16. EKErica Komisar53:48

        Right

    17. CWChris Williamson53:48

        ... the living room.

    18. EKErica Komisar53:49

        The-

    19. CWChris Williamson53:49

        This is the liv- That's the seat where I sat, where-

    20. EKErica Komisar53:51

        That's right. [chuckles] That's right. So somebody said to me, "Well, if you're gonna," this is an analogy, mind you, "if you're gonna neuter your dog, make sure that you take them to a vet that you never, ever want them to go to again."

    21. CWChris Williamson54:02

        Bingo.

    22. EKErica Komisar54:02

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson54:03

        Take them to a crap holiday destination-

    24. EKErica Komisar54:04

        That's right

    25. CWChris Williamson54:05

        ... that they're never gonna wanna go back to.

    26. EKErica Komisar54:06

        That's right. That's right.

    27. CWChris Williamson54:06

        It was bad enough already.

    28. EKErica Komisar54:07

        That's right. And spend a week there-

    29. CWChris Williamson54:08

        Yep

    30. EKErica Komisar54:08

        ... and process it with them. Um, yeah. So, so basically, the idea is just be wise and sensitive about it. I mean, think about the fact that how you tell them will always be referred back to in their mind, how and where. Mm.

14. 54:26 – 59:27

    The Worst Ways to Explain Divorce

    1. CWChris Williamson54:27

       What sort of explanations are psychologically helpful and which should never be said?

    2. EKErica Komisar54:34

       You never wanna say, um, "I never loved your mother," or, "I never loved your father," because-- or, "I wish that I had never married that person or been with that person," because what's implied there, I'll let you answer that one.

    3. CWChris Williamson54:51

       Uh, the family unit that you thought was secure was never secure.

    4. EKErica Komisar54:58

       Right.

    5. CWChris Williamson54:58

       And your ability to understand what is and is not attachment was wrong all along.

    6. EKErica Komisar55:03

       And you should never have been born.

    7. CWChris Williamson55:06

       And that-

    8. EKErica Komisar55:07

       Yeah

    9. CWChris Williamson55:08

       ... downstream from I didn't love them is, "And we shouldn't have had you."

    10. EKErica Komisar55:11

        Right. Right. I wish I'd never met your father. I wish I'd never married your mother. It was a mistake.

    11. CWChris Williamson55:19

        This is more than just the we're getting divorced conversation. This is now two years later, the very difficult night where all of the co-parenting schedules have fallen apart, and, "I wish I'd never met them. I wish I'd never..."

    12. EKErica Komisar55:32

        Children want to know that they were born out of love.

    13. CWChris Williamson55:36

        Hmm.

    14. EKErica Komisar55:37

        It's hard. I've had families where it's been like a one-night stand and they say, "How do I talk about it then?" And I say, "Well, you say you were young, and it was the illusion of love. You thought you loved the person. That's okay." But to say that all children want to be conceived out of love, they wanna be wanted. You know, there's this whole issue of we say adopting children is a mitzvah. It is a great blessing. But it's really hard, too, and you need to know when you adopt children that it's hard because that child, no matter how wonderful you are, you're always going to have to address and help that child. Again, it's a mitzvah because you're helping that child to overcome a conflict and a trauma, which is that their biological parents didn't want them.

    15. CWChris Williamson56:32

        Mm.

    16. EKErica Komisar56:33

        Mm.

    17. CWChris Williamson56:34

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    18. EKErica Komisar58:19

        But you have to deal with it. And so, yes, so adopting children is a mitzvah, but you have to know how to help them with that because that is something-

    19. CWChris Williamson58:27

        Sorry, a, what's a mitzvah?

    20. EKErica Komisar58:28

        Oh, in Jew, it's a blessing. We say it's a blessing. It's the greatest blessing. Um, but, but it's, it is something you have to, to deal with. You have to know that that's a part of the underlying unconscious feeling is, "Did my parents want me?" And it's the same with children that go through a divorce.

    21. CWChris Williamson58:46

        Mm.

    22. EKErica Komisar58:46

        Am I the cause of this divorce? Did my parents conceive me out of love? Did they ever love one another? And so, you know, I would say that most parents conceive children when they loved one another. I would say most.

    23. CWChris Williamson59:00

        Mm.

    24. EKErica Komisar59:00

        You know? Or at least there was the perception of love, right? The illusion of love. Um, and so you want to give children that. You wanna give them that perception, that illusion, uh, that reality that, you know, that, that we loved each other very much and you were conceived in love and brought into this world in love. But we f- adults sometimes fall out of love, but they never ever, ever fall out of love with

15. 59:27 – 1:01:19

    Why Promises Can Backfire in Divorce

    1. EKErica Komisar59:27

       their children.

    2. CWChris Williamson59:27

       That's a good point.

    3. EKErica Komisar59:28

       Mm.

    4. CWChris Williamson59:28

       What role does honesty play versus protecting children from adult realities?

    5. EKErica Komisar59:34

       Mm-hmm. So I always say that honesty, children have bullshit meters, so they know when you're lying to them. So you don't wanna lie out and out blatantly lie to them, but you have to be sensitive in your truths, right? You have to be, um, discriminating in your truths and how you, how you describe those truths, so you can tell children the truth. I think that a lot of parents lie to their children or make promises to their children because they feel guilty. That's dangerous. So meaning if you're divorcing and, um, your child asks you, you know, um, "Will we still have holidays together? What we, what will we do about Christmas?"

    6. CWChris Williamson1:00:20

       Mm.

    7. EKErica Komisar1:00:21

       Saying to them, "Oh, no, we're still a family. We'll always..." You know, [chuckles] I always think this is funny. This is, there's a division in the community that deals with divorcing families and this idea of the we're still a family. Um, it's a complicated thing to say we're still a family. Um, y- yes, in some form we're still a family, but usually divorced families don't spend holidays together. Uh, maybe they do in the beginning, but eventually they don't.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:00:50

       Mm.

    9. EKErica Komisar1:00:50

       And so to promise your child that nothing is going to change in their life, in their living situation, in their school, you do wanna keep as much the same as possible. You want to disrupt as little as possible in a child's life, particularly in the first year. But to make promises that you can't keep to them-Um, is perceived by children as lies-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:01:14

        Mm

    11. EKErica Komisar1:01:14

        ... and a further breach in trust.

16. 1:01:19 – 1:05:22

    What Makes a Divorce “Good” or “Bad”?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:01:19

       I wonder-- Let's say that I gave you the task of trying to design the worst possible divorce for a child-

    2. EKErica Komisar1:01:27

       [chuckles]

    3. CWChris Williamson1:01:27

       ... to go through. As to say, what is the worst way that two people could get divorced? How would they talk about it? What would they do? How would they tell them? How would that roll over time?

    4. EKErica Komisar1:01:37

       Oh, dear. Oh.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:01:38

       What would that look like?

    6. EKErica Komisar1:01:39

       How much time do we have? Um, 'cause I treat some of those cases. It's very sad for me to treat them, but I do.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:01:45

       Well, you've got inspiration then. You should-

    8. EKErica Komisar1:01:46

       Yeah

    9. CWChris Williamson1:01:46

       ... this should be easy.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:01:48

        Um, the worst cases are the cases where one parent, um, I suppose betrays another parent, and then it's something that the parent who's betrayed can't get over. And so there is depression, hostility, um, belligerence, um, between the two parents. I guess the, the main things that I've seen are when parents treat children as possessions, like a, a Porsche or a car or, you know, like splitting a, um, f- the 50/50 piece. When they treat children as possessions, that is a terrible thing. Um, I think when, when parents, um, lie to children in one way or another, um, when parents overshare with children, um, when parents alienate children from one parent or another, um, when parents are terrible at communicating and cooperating with each other. We call it co-parenting for a reason. Uh, when they, um, are more focused on themselves and their own pain and will do what's right for them, but not what's good for their children. Um, yeah. Those are some of the, the-

    11. CWChris Williamson1:03:09

        And they did it at Christmas.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:03:11

        Yeah. Those are some of the top hits. Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:03:13

        Okay. And what's the inverse? If you were to tactically say these are the biggest movers for going through a difficult time well, uh, what does that look like?

    14. EKErica Komisar1:03:27

        Cooperation, communication, respect you, finding somewhere deep inside of you the respect and admiration and love that you once shared with the person that you had children with. You might not be in love with them anymore. You might even be angry at them and disappointed in them, but that you can dig deep and find some degree of respect and admiration and love for them that you shared with them, so you can do the right thing for your children. So you can see your children for where they are developmentally and in age, and know that in the scheme of life... You know, for women who have careers and want children, I always say, you know, you can do everything in life, you just can't do it all at the same time. And I'm gonna say it's the same with divorce. You know, throughout a child's life, you are going to get a lot of love and attention and connection to that child, but you may not get it all at the same time as the other parent.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:04:27

        Mm.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:04:28

        So the competition between parents sometimes, um, sort of overwhelms what a child may need, or maybe usurps what a child may need. So, you know, the idea of working collaboratively, having good open communication, having some respect and admiration for the partner that you had the child with, um, and then living close together. You know, the other thing is that the best co-parenting situations are ones where parents live close to each other, close enough that they-- children can go easily back and forth, and-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:05:05

        You don't have to put them on a flight.

    18. EKErica Komisar1:05:06

        Yeah. The other thing I will say is there is a trend in America to do this two, three, two, um, you know, custody arrangement, which is like treating children like they're a sack of potatoes. Children hate

17. 1:05:22 – 1:08:31

    Why Stability Matters More Than You Think

    1. EKErica Komisar1:05:22

       it. And when they grow up-

    2. CWChris Williamson1:05:24

       What's two, three, two?

    3. EKErica Komisar1:05:24

       Two days with one parent, three days with another, another parent, two days with... Two, three, two, three, two, three. It's like a, it's like a dance, two-step dance. Ch- it drives children crazy. And when they grow up, teenagers and young adults will say, "The worst thing for me was that I was thrown back and forth like a sack of potatoes."

    4. CWChris Williamson1:05:43

       Why is it so bad? Why is two, three, two so bad for children?

    5. EKErica Komisar1:05:47

       Because they need stability, particularly during the week when they're in school. They need to feel that they have a primary residence where they can lay their head down on the same pillow, and they have some stability. This idea of... So, you know, for anybody who's ever had two homes, either intentionally and voluntarily or involuntarily, you know what it's like to have to move from home to home to home to home. It's crazy-making. And for a child who's already feeling destabilized, um, I always say in the first year, the best is to do something called nesting, where they don't have to move at all. I always recommend that for a year. No more than a year because-

    6. CWChris Williamson1:06:28

       You put them in one location and have the other parent come to visit regularly.

    7. EKErica Komisar1:06:30

       They stay in their home. They stay in their home, and the parents come and go.

    8. CWChris Williamson1:06:35

       Mm.

    9. EKErica Komisar1:06:35

       So the parents have a separate apartment. And so, um, so... And that's fine for a year. But after that, that you find an arrangement where the children can have a primary residence. And this is also very controversial because, you know, everybody wants to see this thing as a fairness thing, and everybody has to have their... You know, like, "I'll take the legs, you take the arms." But what children actually need is stability. They need to feel they have-A secure and primary home

    10. CWChris Williamson1:07:02

        It ma- go ahead

    11. EKErica Komisar1:07:03

        And then, so the old arrangements, interestingly, the old arrangements, um, which now are considered passe, where a child lived with a mother during the week and then spent weekends with the father or maybe was with the father Friday through Sunday morning, that works far better, because the child isn't in school. The child can be home, come home every day, do their homework in the same place, and have a sense of stability, and then go to the father on weekends. Or if the father's the primary attachment figure, the, the child lives with the father during the week and then goes to the mother on the weekends. But the idea of having a primary stable residence is far better for children, and that doesn't mean that the parent who's not living with the child during the week can't see the child. You know, you can come, and you can have dinners, and you can have mock sleepovers, and you can pick the child up from school and take them to soccer practice and, but it's the idea of where you sleep. You travel a lot, I know, right? You travel a lot, and I travel a lot for what we do. You know what it feels like, too. It's like being almost like in a, in a band, you know, where you're like, have one gig, and it's very destabilizing to not sleep in the same place and have a home. And I think that's what it feels like to children.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:08:19

        What's-

    13. EKErica Komisar1:08:19

        And they resent that more than anything. I would tell parents who are listening, children resent that more than anything.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:08:26

        Consciously resent it?

    15. EKErica Komisar1:08:27

        Consciously resent it.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:08:29

        Wh-

    17. EKErica Komisar1:08:29

        And tell parents they resent

18. 1:08:31 – 1:14:15

    How Much Time Should Each Parent Get?

    1. EKErica Komisar1:08:31

       it.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:08:31

       What is the longest amount of time that kids should go without seeing the other parent?

    3. EKErica Komisar1:08:37

       I think parents should see children every day if they can. So if I live down the street from you, I, I don't recommend that people live in the same building, but sometimes it works. For a variety of reasons, I think it can be problematic. But if you live down the street or a block away, where you can still stay in the routine of walking your child to school or picking them up from school or going to soccer practice with them, um, that's a very good thing for children, where a lot of the routines that they may have had with the parent aren't disrupted. Um, so that can be a very good thing, where parents are geographically close, and they continue to do the same things they always did, the, on a daily basis. You know, if Tuesday night was pizza night at the house, then your dad takes you out for pizza on Tuesday nights or-

    4. CWChris Williamson1:09:26

       Yeah

    5. EKErica Komisar1:09:26

       ... but then brings you home to sleep in your bed that you're used to [laughs] . Um, the things that you do now when your children are young and you're going through a divorce are going to be appreciated in the long run. They may not say to you, the kids, "Thank you, Mommy. Thank you, Daddy." But in the long run, your children will see, they will know whether you have been willing to sacrifice your own personal desires and needs for them, and in the long run, it will pay off in terms of the relationship with them. But yes, parents should have regular access to their children, and if they're geographically connected, then I don't actually like the two, three, two, because what it assumes is that on those two days or three days, the child can't see the other parent.

    6. CWChris Williamson1:10:14

       Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah, it's an all or nothing, black to white-

    7. EKErica Komisar1:10:17

       It's all or nothing

    8. CWChris Williamson1:10:17

       ... black to white. Yeah.

    9. EKErica Komisar1:10:18

       And then I have situations where parents move out of state, where they're literally, I can't tell you how many people call me to do expert witness for their cases, and these cases are so incredibly sad to me. And I cannot take all the cases that I'm asked to, to be expert witness on, but cases where parents have moved out of state, and they literally wanna take a breastfeeding baby away from a mother for a week at a time to be in another state, to be handed over to a caregiver or put in daycare or to a grandmother, because that way they possess that child. I'm like, first of all, parents shouldn't be allowed to move out of state. I mean, and if they move out of state, then the other parent has to go with them. This idea that you can take babies away from parents, it shouldn't be allowed.

    10. CWChris Williamson1:11:10

        Or that if you move out of state, that you give up your custody rights.

    11. EKErica Komisar1:11:13

        That's it, or you come and visit on weekends or vacations, but that somehow-

    12. CWChris Williamson1:11:18

        It does-

    13. EKErica Komisar1:11:18

        ... you're not pulling the baby apart for your own personal satisfaction and fairness.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:11:25

        It certainly seems like it's, the onus is on the parent that moves away, even if they weren't the one that was the departor from the relationship.

    15. EKErica Komisar1:11:33

        It should be that way. The onus should be on them to have to make the accommodation.

    16. CWChris Williamson1:11:38

        Mm-hmm.

    17. EKErica Komisar1:11:39

        You know, the other thing is this is a very common situation now, which is very frustrating to me. If one parent is a stay-at-home parent, and let's say it's the mother, but it could also be the father. If one of parent was the primary attachment figure and the stay-at-home parent, and the other parent was working full time, and that situation is going to continue, then, or even if the mother or the primary attachment figure works part-time and the father works full-time, let's just say that for now, and but the father wants the child half the time. But the child could be with the mother if the father's traveling or is working 10-hour days. There are parents who would rather take the child away from the spouse who could watch that child and be with that child and care for that child and put that child in daycare or give that child over to a babysitter rather than allowing a mother or a pa- the primary parent to care for them. This is happening all the time, and it's selfishness. It is pure, unadulterated selfishness, and it is very hard for me to see parents being selfish in the face of a divorce. It's the one thing I can't abide by.

    18. CWChris Williamson1:13:01

        Before we continue, if you care about what you're putting in your body, protein powder is probably the supplement that you think least about. You buy a big tub that says grass-fed on the label, and you figure that's good enough. But here's the thing, most brands never test their product after they leave the factory, and that is why I'm such a massive fan of Momentous. They test every single batch for contaminants, heavy metals, and banned substances. They're NSF certified for sport, which means it is the highest bar that you can clear in the supplement industry. And their whey comes from grass-fed European cows, which means no hormones, no antibiotics or any other junk. It's fast absorbing, easy on the gut, and actually mixes smoothly without that chalky aftertaste that most clean proteins have. This stuff rules. These travel packs are awesome as well. If you've been struggling to hit your protein goals like everybody else, or you've just never fully trusted what's in your tub, it's, uh, time to give Momentous a shot. And there's a thirty-day money-back guarantee. Buy it completely risk-free. They ship internationally, and right now you can get up to thirty-five percent off your first subscription and that thirty-day money-back guarantee by going to the link in the description below or heading to livemomentous.com/modernwisdom using the code MODERNWISDOM at checkout. That's L-I-V-E-M-O-M-E-N-T-O-U-S.com/modernwisdom and MODERNWISDOM at checkout.

19. 1:14:15 – 1:19:06

    Why Babies Must Come First

    1. CWChris Williamson1:14:15

       Look, I understand, uh, I'm trying to sort of put myself in the mind as somebody that's never been married and doesn't have a kid. Uh, I'm trying to put myself in the mind of someone who's on the tail end of it, who's trying to do a postmortem of the imaginary marriage and child. It must be so difficult to try and navigate this rupture of an attachment. The person that you thought you were going to spend the rest of your life with has left you, and now there's this weird push and pull dynamic, and what are we gonna do about money? And I, I need a, I... My emotions are bleeding out of me. I mean, think about how much people struggle just with normal breakups already.

    2. EKErica Komisar1:14:53

       Yes.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:14:53

       And then divorce is even worse. And what's gonna happen with the car? And what's gonna happen with the bank account? And what's gonna happen with the house? And what's gonna happen with the kid? And all of this excess emotion is just pouring out of you, and the baby or adolescent is just the sponge that's absorbing a lot of this. It's, it's, it's really tough, and I, I get it. I had a... [chuckles] I'm using my evolutionary psychologist hat here. Given the fact that it's important for there to be, uh, the, the spare when it comes to parenting, obviously, if you were to go through a divorce pre-verbal, there's going to be stress. But if the wife was to hot swap to a new male partner sufficiently quickly, presumably that would actually mitigate some of these challenges because baby's ability to detect that is dad is actually pretty limited in any case at the start.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:15:57

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:15:57

       So not advocating it, not saying that this is a strategy, but I think it, it's a, an interesting thought experiment that what you need is a male figure. For instance-

    6. EKErica Komisar1:16:09

       Mm-hmm, mm-hmm

    7. CWChris Williamson1:16:09

       ... could, uh, could a, a mother use her father, get her father to come and live in the house with her and have... Or a, a, a, a, a brother or an uncle or something like that, or just a best friend's husband or whatever. Can you mitigate some of that?

    8. EKErica Komisar1:16:27

       Y- yes. And so-- And that's very important to understand with older children. Let's say you have a primary school-aged child, uh, you know, an eight-year-old child or a s- even a six-year-old child who is very attached to the non-primary attachment figure parent. Having a grandmother in the house or an aunt that lives with you or even a babysitter, it's perfectly fine and reasonable to say-

    9. CWChris Williamson1:16:50

       Hmm

    10. EKErica Komisar1:16:50

        ... there's a female figure in the house. We're talking about when children are developing a deep sense of attachment security. Remember that attachment security is the foundation for mental health, so this is a period that should not be touchable. It should not be a movable feast at all. It should be respected on such a high level that judges and mediators and divorce attorneys and forensic psychologists and co-parenting, uh, specialists, they should all be on the same page. Unfortunately, they're not. Most are not well-versed on, on attachment security or the importance of it, and again, prioritize the fairness, the legal fairness of splitting the baby in half and parents' rights. It's all about parents. So with a very young baby, the baby's needs must always be prioritized over your own needs, and that's a harsh talk for a lot of parents to hear, but that's the truth.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:17:48

        Because they're psychologically suffering.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:17:50

        Yes.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:17:50

        I'm already in pain-

    14. EKErica Komisar1:17:51

        That's right

    15. CWChris Williamson1:17:52

        ... and you're telling me that I need to-

    16. EKErica Komisar1:17:54

        That's right

    17. CWChris Williamson1:17:55

        ... apply more pain to myself.

    18. EKErica Komisar1:17:56

        That's right. When you stub your toe, whoever is in the room is gonna get screamed at. If I stub my toe and my husband's in the room-

    19. CWChris Williamson1:18:03

        [laughs]

    20. EKErica Komisar1:18:03

        ... I'll be like, "Why is that friggin'-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:18:05

        It was his fault. It was your fault

    22. EKErica Komisar1:18:06

        ... put that bed in the room?" Everybody does that, right? We all do that because it's human nature when we're in pain-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:18:12

        That interesting

    24. EKErica Komisar1:18:12

        ... that we want to make other people feel our pain.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:18:14

        We lash out.

    26. EKErica Komisar1:18:15

        We do. We do.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:18:15

        We lash out at the people that are around us because we want support. I mean, think about what pain is. The, the, the physical, verbal presentation of somebody being in pain.

    28. EKErica Komisar1:18:26

        Right.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:18:27

        The yelp. What is that? It's a big alarm. It's a big alarm that's going out to everybody around. I, I require help, and then you curl up into a ball. Your shoulders sort of curl over in this kind of way. You make yourself look small and fragile and frail, like somebody that could do with some fucking help.

    30. EKErica Komisar1:18:43

        It's, it's an infantile yelp.
20. 1:19:06 – 1:21:36

    How Can Parents Stay Emotionally Steady?

    1. EKErica Komisar1:19:06

       the room.

    2. CWChris Williamson1:19:06

       Okay. Talk to me about what parents can doTo improve their emotional regulation during these situations, 'cause it feels like, uh, you need to do it, and I agree that you've had the kid, you were in love.

    3. EKErica Komisar1:19:22

       Right.

    4. CWChris Williamson1:19:23

       This is now an 18-year contract to get, or maybe a 23-year contract-

    5. EKErica Komisar1:19:28

       Yeah

    6. CWChris Williamson1:19:28

       ... um, to get this thing out into the real world-

    7. EKErica Komisar1:19:31

       Right

    8. CWChris Williamson1:19:31

       ... to create a big enough runway. But it's not just, okay, I'll just decide to do it. The sensation, this overwhelm of emotions and activation and my wounds, I'm just like my mother, and he's just like my father and rah, rah, rah. How can parents who are going through a divorce learn to regulate themselves better so that they can be better co-parents?

    9. EKErica Komisar1:19:54

       Right. It's a trauma laboratory is what I call it. So the idea is that you need a support system, and, and again, I, I'm not someone who advocates for therapy with everyone, but I am gonna say when you're going through a divorce, you need to get some help. Uh, you need to get, you need to get some therapy because you need some place to go with those feelings where you can deposit them and leave them there. Once a week, twice a week, where you can go to that person, deposit those feelings, process them, process the conflict, mourn with somebody who's got your back and who understands. You know, sometimes you can also go to your family and your close friends. They have to be supportive. Not all family and friends are supportive. We would hope that they would all be, but-

    10. CWChris Williamson1:20:38

        Hmm

    11. EKErica Komisar1:20:38

        ... not all family and friends are supportive, so. And, you know, family and friends come with a particular perspective and often an agenda, which is why therapy's so different than going to family and friends. So people will often say, "Well, why do I need to go to therapy if I have family and friends?" Well, family and friends have a particular perspective, and they often wanna share it with you.

    12. CWChris Williamson1:20:57

        Hmm.

    13. EKErica Komisar1:20:57

        Uh, therapists are not meant to share their own personal perspective with you, and if they do, you shouldn't be with that therapist. A therapist is there to help you to process that grief, to help you to process that loss, and to get through it, and be a safe container for those feelings. So you need family and friends' support, as long as they're supportive, and then you also need therapy. You need some place to take those feelings so you don't offload on your children, and you don't start making terrible decisions that will have long-term consequences on your children's mental health because, again, the, your children's mental health isn't so- isn't an easy fix later on.

    14. CWChris Williamson1:21:35

        Ah.

21. 1:21:36 – 1:27:58

    What Does Secure Attachment Really Look Like?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:21:36

       Okay, going back to your original area of work from a few years ago, the attachment security that kids need in those first three years, what does that look like? You've said what it doesn't look like, absentee of the mother, et cetera, et cetera. What's the gold standard for attachment security for a child who's naught to three years old?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:21:58

       So again, in a way, I think what's happened to the world is that we used to be able to look at infants and see how fragile they, they are. I think the world has become desensitized, deconditioned, if you will, to the fragility of infants and toddlers, just how fragile they are. Um, they're not at all resilient. They're not at all self-possessed. They cannot deal with great amounts of stress. So I feel like the world's become sort of desensitized to so many things.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:22:33

       Hmm.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:22:34

       Um, but yeah, so attachment security is both an emotional and a physical state of being. It is, um... When babies are born, they literally need skin-to-skin contact to regulate their emotions. You're not only regulating emotions, you're also regulating biological processes. You're regulating their breath and their heartbeat and, but mostly their cortisol. You're keeping it very, very, very low. There was a researcher, um, that I interviewed for my book. She's European, and she said, you know, "Babies in the Western world cry more than any other babies in the world." She said, "Because in other parts of the world, they don't need to cry because their distress levels are kept so low 'cause they're worn on their mothers' fronts and then their mothers' backs. They're not separated from their mothers." But in the Western world, we have this very perverse idea that babies are supposed to be independent, that they're born independent, that they're born self-sufficient, like self-cleaning ovens or something.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:23:30

       Where do you think that's come from?

    6. EKErica Komisar1:23:32

       It comes from a narcissistic, a growth of narcissism, sort of like bacteria, a growth of narcissism in society that has put the individual first before, um, before relationships, before connection to others. Um, that could be a whole other podcast interview with you to talk about that. But there is a growth in individualism, self-centeredness, even self-sufficiency.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:24:03

       So is this as much that newborn baby is now an independent agent, or is it I am an in- independent agent and that thing is imposing on me?

    8. EKErica Komisar1:24:16

       Both.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:24:17

       Right.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:24:17

        It's both.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:24:18

        Okay. Yep.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:24:19

        Where did it start? Some say the Industrial Revolution, which separated families and made mothers go out to work instead of being with babies. Some say it was the first wave of feminism, but actually the first wave of feminism was very pro-maternal.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:24:33

        It was maternal feminism.

    14. EKErica Komisar1:24:34

        Yeah, yeah, yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:24:35

        Yeah.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:24:35

        Yeah, it was.

    17. CWChris Williamson1:24:35

        Sheryl Sandberg, is it her fault?

    18. EKErica Komisar1:24:37

        Uh, no, not Sheryl Sandberg. It was, uh, the Gloria Steinems and the people that came later. It was the second wave of feminism that really, um, promoted the idea that, um, mothering was not valuable work. But actually, the first wave of feminism was very pro-maternity. And the Me Movement, the Me Movement in the '60s was very, uh, pro-individualism.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:25:01

        Not Me Too.

    20. EKErica Komisar1:25:02

        No, no. [laughs]

    21. CWChris Williamson1:25:03

        What's the Me-

    22. EKErica Komisar1:25:04

        No, no

    23. CWChris Williamson1:25:04

        ... what's the Me Movement?

    24. EKErica Komisar1:25:05

        The Me Movement was the beginning-- It was a movement towards individualism. It was actually called the Me Movement.Um, and, uh, but so all of these social movements which were moving away from the family construct towards sort of the communal construct, towards, uh, you know, David Brooks writes about this, other people write about it, but, uh, towards a more individualistic, narcissistic, self-oriented approach to living, um, which also has meant the dissolution of the family. I mean, you know, divorce is-- We don't talk about divorce. One of the reasons I wrote this book is 'cause I was so frustrated. I only write books when I'm really frustrated about something in society, and there isn't anything that I can refer patients to, to really help them understand. The-- I think we don't talk about divorce. Fifty percent of couples divorce, and if you wanna know on some basic level what's causing, you know, what's contributing to the mental health crisis, one in two couples divorce, leaving their children without a, a nuclear family or two parents or, you know, sort of this rift in the family. It's a trauma, and I don't think we wanna talk about it 'cause I think it's so sensitive 'cause then people will feel guilty, and everybody's so sensitive about everybody feeling badly.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:26:19

        Apart from the kids.

    26. EKErica Komisar1:26:20

        Apart from the kids. That's it. Ev- all the adults in the room are so fragile that we can't talk about having to stay home if you have a child for a little while, having to give up some career ambitions in those early years that your children need you.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:26:34

        Hmm.

    28. EKErica Komisar1:26:35

        You know, we can't talk about, uh, you know, divorcing in the first three years probably isn't a good idea. W-w-we can't talk about these things because it's gonna make somebody feel badly. I'm like, "You know what?" And I've said this over and over again, "A little bit of guilt is a healthy thing 'cause it means your ego is functioning."

    29. CWChris Williamson1:26:53

        It's gonna guide you-

    30. EKErica Komisar1:26:54

        It's-
22. 1:27:58 – 1:35:09

    How the Feminist Movement Left Children Behind

    1. CWChris Williamson1:27:58

       I had this, um, realization when I was looking at a study that came out that was reanalyzing some big game hunting data, and you might have seen it. It was, uh, women did just as much big game hunting as men and sometimes even more. And I thought, "Well, this is surprising." Like, big game hunting's pretty big, and women don't tend to be quite as big as men on average, and maybe they've got a-

    2. EKErica Komisar1:28:18

       That's a surprising figure to me too. Yeah.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:28:20

       Uh, turns out that it was wrong. That's why it's surprising.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:28:22

       Yeah. Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:28:23

       Um, they reanalyzed the data, but they'd done loads of fuckery with P-values and categorization and a lot of other stuff. So the revelation became un-revelated, I guess, again later on. And I was trying to think about why the female, I think, feminist-leaning researchers had decided that they wanted to do that. Like, what would be the reason for doing it? And, um, you know the soft bigotry of low expectations?

    6. EKErica Komisar1:28:48

       Yeah.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:28:49

       Yeah. I think there's a soft bigotry of male expectations.

    8. EKErica Komisar1:28:52

       Hmm.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:28:53

       I think that implicit, and it's the Me movement, that's what made me think about it.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:28:55

        Mm.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:28:56

        Implicitly, anything that a man does is seen as the preferred kind of behavior, even by women who are trying to do the we are for women thing.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:29:05

        Yeah.

    13. CWChris Williamson1:29:05

        And it's such a slippery, kind of stupid way to slip misogyny into your own worldview as someone that's trying to combat misogyny. Because if you're to say, "Well, big game hunting, that's important. Women should have done-- and maybe they did even more," it's like, but implicitly, you're derogating how important the gathering is if you're saying that the hunting is more important-

    14. EKErica Komisar1:29:26

        Of course

    15. CWChris Williamson1:29:26

        ... and the rearing and the nurturing and all of the other things. So the same to say that, uh, motherhood is just, it's not that important, you know, working. It is interesting to me that a lot of the people that hold these sorts of opinions are able to hold two, uh, that seem to contradict each other. First, corporations are soulless, blood-sucking monstrosities, and capitalism is a scourge on the Earth that's trying to keep everybody down. And also, your career is the single most important thing that you should do, and nobody should ever stop you from doing it-

    16. EKErica Komisar1:29:53

        Right

    17. CWChris Williamson1:29:53

        ... least of all a child.

    18. EKErica Komisar1:29:55

        Right.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:29:56

        And also, maternity leave is a complete fucking crime against humanity and inhuman, and we should have more of it. Okay, well, square this triangle for me, please, because, uh, it, it just seems like people want-- I think that you're right, sovereignty, independence, but it's a kind of petulant independence. It's like a, "Eh," like stamping of the feet and throwing of the hands on the floor.

    20. EKErica Komisar1:30:17

        It's infantile, yeah.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:30:18

        Yeah, it's juvenile, like, "I want my thing. I want my thing the way I want it right now, and nobody else can tell me how."

    22. EKErica Komisar1:30:24

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:30:24

        Like, but you don't even know what's good. This isn't an informed opinion. You don't know what's right for you. You don't know what you're going to regret or not regret in future because you haven't thought about this. You're at the mercy of memes that have been created by people who have got even less education than you do, that you're now being marionetted by. You're being pa- parroted by these ideas that you don't have any idea where they've come from, and I'm sure that I have tons of them as well. But these are big life decisions.

    24. EKErica Komisar1:30:51

        Mm.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:30:51

        And I, I just... That soft bigotry thing was so surprising to me as a group of people trying to be pro-women, trying to be holistically integrated, transcending and including all of the things that they want women to have been in the past and become in the future. You are by design making anything that women have a predisposition toward less, and anything that men, th-

    26. CWChris Williamson1:31:18

        True freedom is having sex like your brother and working like your father

    27. EKErica Komisar1:31:23

        So there's a defense called identification with the aggressor. It's a psychoanalytic term, but it basically describes what it is, um, that when you feel abused or oppressed, rather than taking a position opposite the oppressor, you want to become the oppressor because then you have the power.

    28. CWChris Williamson1:31:46

        Redemption.

    29. EKErica Komisar1:31:46

        You have the power. You have the control. You'd rather be the victimizer than the victim. And what happened with the second wave of feminism, um, is a lot of those feminists had come from very traumatic histories where they were very adversarial with men, um, and treated men more as adversaries, had been abused or, you know, there was a lot of, uh, in, in, in those, th-those, that group of women. And although they did a good thing for society by freeing women from the oppression of men, in a way what they did is they wanted to become men instead of saying, "We want to be respected and valued for being women and maybe even be paid for being women."

    30. CWChris Williamson1:32:34

        Mm.
23. 1:35:09 – 1:38:21

    Why Daycare is the Worst Place For Children

    1. CWChris Williamson1:35:09

       Talk to me about daycare. What's the problem with daycare?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:35:12

       Well, daycare, as I said, um, it's basically separating babies from their primary attachment figures, putting them in institutional settings with ratios of no less than five to one, usually eight to one caregiver-to-child ratio, and you're basically sending that child's cortisol levels. The research shows that salivary cortisol levels go s- through the roof. So babies go into high-stress states. Now they're separated from their mother's bodies, and they're separated from the person in the world who's meant to make them feel safe. They're in a loud, overstimulating setting with babies crying and caregivers, transient caregivers alternating and some being absent, and it's a new caregiver 'cause they're always out sick.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:35:57

       Hmm.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:35:58

       And it's, it's the worst, the worst possible care, caregiving situation for a child. There are so many better. If you have to work, the best is a mother or father, whoever is the primary attachment figure. The next best is kinship bonds, which are f- family or extended family members who have a more similar investment to children, uh, emotionally. The next best would be a single surrogate caregiver or a nanny or a babysitter who's going to be an alternative attachment figure to that baby, which will provide them with some sense of security and care for them in your home.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:36:32

       Hmm.

    6. EKErica Komisar1:36:32

       And if you can't afford that, then share a caregiver. That's a big thing in California where they, uh, will split the cost of one caregiver so that caregiver is now taking care of two or three children. You have now reduced the ratio, and that child is being cared for in your home.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:36:45

       It's basically-

    8. EKErica Komisar1:36:45

       And you have agency over that person

    9. CWChris Williamson1:36:46

       ... basically private daycare where you don't have to travel.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:36:49

        And it's in your home, and so you have agency over who that person is, how they care for your child. You can put cameras in your house if you want. You can see what they do. You can observe them. You know who's taking, taking care of your children.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:37:02

        Hmm.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:37:03

        And your child isn't going into this, like, high-stress state of screaming, crying. If you go into a daycare center, you would cry. I always say to parents, "You drop them off, and you have this schizoid response where you shut down what you're feeling and go to work." But if you knew what happened in those daycare centers, if you heard those babies cry-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:37:23

        What does happen? What happens in daycares?

    14. EKErica Komisar1:37:26

        Crying babies because the bottom line is if I handed you eight babies and you're one person, could you soothe all those babies in distress at the same time?

    15. CWChris Williamson1:37:38

        I'm not convinced I could soothe one of them.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:37:39

        Okay. Now I'm giving you eight. And so what's happening is those one person cannot... You know, parents who are, have attachment disorders of their own think, "Oh, it's better for somebody else to care for my child because I'm not a good-- I can't handle it," without thinking, "Who's this person that I've just handed my baby to, and how are they gonna care for five to eight children and soothe them when they're in distress?" And so parents just-- it's like they shut down a part of their-- It's like they sh- they shut down their empathy. It's like they have a schizoid response with empathy where they cannot see their baby's vulnerability or their pa- or their baby suffering.

24. 1:38:21 – 1:40:13

    We Can’t Ignore Early Attachment

    1. CWChris Williamson1:38:21

       What are your favorite studies that show how we shouldn't ignore early attachment in childhood?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:38:30

       John Bowlby is the father of attachment. You need go no farther than John Bowlby, but you could look at all of the, um, st- what they call the stranger situation studies, which they've been doing since the nineteen sixties. They have repeated this experiment over and over. In fact, I was, um-- There's a researcher named Beatrice Beebe in New York. She's very famous, and I was in some of her videos because when I was a young social work student, I did some volunteering, um, in a stranger situation study. Again, this, this, this situation is repeated over and over and over again. It's, it's the most well-known attachment security, um, study. And it, it sort of goes something like this. The mother and baby are playing in a room. A stranger walks in. Um, the mother walks out of the room. The mother walks back in, and there's a reunion. It's sort of they, they look at the baby's reactions. They look at the interaction between the mother and the baby, the interaction between the stranger and the baby. They look at the b- the reunion between the mother and the baby. So this is something that's done over and over. We have so much longitudinal research on attachment security going back to the sixties, so much research to show that attachment security, if you're not securely attached at twelve months, then seventy-two percent of those babies twenty years later will not be securely attached, and that insecure attachment is tied to depression, anxiety, borderline personality disorder. Um, so we have the research. The research has been there for many years. We just-- now we have n- now we have the neuroscience research and the epigenetics research to support the attachment research.

25. 1:40:13 – 1:41:17

    Are Attachment Styles Inherited?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:40:13

       Square this circle with the heritability of attachment style for me.

    2. EKErica Komisar1:40:18

       The heritability of attachment style. No. So it's generational expression. So I, I, I sort of balk at the idea of inheri- inheritance. It's inheritance of acquired characteristics. So you don't inherit it genetically. You inherit sensitivity genetically.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:40:36

       Mm-hmm.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:40:36

       But you inherit through acquired characteristics, meaning your environment.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:40:41

       Mm-hmm.

    6. EKErica Komisar1:40:42

       A mother who is insecurely, anxiously attached will more likely produce an anxiously attached baby. A mother who is avoidantly attached will more likely produce an avoidantly attached baby. A mother who has a disorganized attachment and is a borderline personality disorder kind of patient will more likely produce a child who has a disorganized attachment and probably a borderline personality disorder.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:41:06

       Hmm.

    8. EKErica Komisar1:41:06

       So, um, we call it generational expression of mental illness, so inqu- in, um, inheritance of acquired characteristics.

26. 1:41:17 – 1:49:54

    Are Babies Born Aggressive?

    1. CWChris Williamson1:41:17

       I guess it's interesting to think about predisposition versus predetermination with stuff like this.

    2. EKErica Komisar1:41:25

       Mm-hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:41:25

       The raw materials are there. I've always thought this about-- I'm a big Plomin fan. I think he's one of the best researchers of all time. He's, what, the fifth most cited psychologist in the twentieth century.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:41:38

       Mm-hmm.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:41:38

       Uh, this-- the guy that-- kind of the grandfather of behavioral genetics. I think he rules. And, um, when I think about the first few years of a child's life, it's such a weird confluence of what were the raw materials that you were made of-

    6. EKErica Komisar1:41:53

       Yeah

    7. CWChris Williamson1:41:54

       ... how were they expressed-

    8. EKErica Komisar1:41:56

       Mm-hmm

    9. CWChris Williamson1:41:56

       ... in the people who made th- who, who gave you them. They are expressed in behavior.

    10. EKErica Komisar1:42:04

        Yeah.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:42:04

        And that behavior happens to be the environment. It would be like, it would be like a cow that cuts its own leg off to then cook it in a stew. You know, like the very thing that it's made of is the thing that's, that's creating it. And, um, that's a fucking horrific analogy. But it seems so unfair. This is what it-- I, I sort of came back to when I started to think deeply about behavioral genetics and attachment style, that you have presumably an anxiously attached mother has the raw materials to be anxiously attached and then is presenting in an anxiously attached way-

    12. EKErica Komisar1:42:41

        Yeah

    13. CWChris Williamson1:42:42

        ... which means that the child that has the raw materials to be anxiously attached gets that reinforced and-

    14. EKErica Komisar1:42:47

        Yes

    15. CWChris Williamson1:42:47

        ... all of this happens pre-verbal. All of this happens b-before you can even remember. I can't remember anything basically before age, like, nine or ten.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:42:56

        Right. And that's when-

    17. CWChris Williamson1:42:57

        Literally really spotty memories

    18. EKErica Komisar1:42:58

        ... and that's, so you know the, you know the song from Hamilton, "You wanna be in the room where it happens"? The room where it happens is zero to three.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:43:04

        Hmm.

    20. EKErica Komisar1:43:06

        That's what it means to be in the room where it happens, and no one wants to talk about the room where it happens because they can't remember it consciously because it's preconscious memory, but it's what shapes your personality.

    21. CWChris Williamson1:43:17

        Hmm.

    22. EKErica Komisar1:43:18

        So nature versus nurture is always an interesting question because we do-- we are born with a constitution, meaning constitution is the amount of aggression we're born with. Babies are all born aggressive. You-

    23. CWChris Williamson1:43:30

        Are the most aggressive people on the planet are three-year-olds?

    24. EKErica Komisar1:43:33

        So well, no, actually, babies are born dysregulated, and babies are all born aggressive. So, you know, people get it wrong. People, [sighs] people think that babies are born regulated, and we dysregulate them by neglecting them or abusing them. No, actually, babies are born dysregulated, uh, with highs and lows. I mean, if you ever just observe a baby, um, infants that are newborn infants, they will go from being happy one second and zero to sixty in three seconds. Boy, they'll be screaming if somebody do-

    25. CWChris Williamson1:44:08

        Just the most bipolar little blobs

    26. EKErica Komisar1:44:10

        ... just bipolar little blobs. Okay, but they're not blobs. They're incredibly, uh, sort of present, but they have no emotional regulation. And it is by that skin-to-skin contact, that calm, soothing tone of voice of the primary attachment figure. Every time the baby's in distress, the mother soothes the baby. The way I would describe it is babies are born like sailing a sailboat in the Pacific in a storm.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:44:38

        Hmm.

    28. EKErica Komisar1:44:38

        This is how babies are born. By having a mother physically and emotionally present in those first three years who is calm and present and loving and soothing, you get the baby not-- You don't wanna get the baby flatlining. That's not what we call homeostasis. We call homeostasis more like sailing in the Caribbean on a sunny day. [chuckles]

    29. CWChris Williamson1:44:59

        Uh-huh.

    30. EKErica Komisar1:44:59

        There's waves, but, you know, you can manage them, and then, you know, they're kind of m-manageable and pleasant, and that's where you wanna get the baby. But you cannot do that if you throw your baby into a daycare setting, if you disappear ten hours a day and go to work, and the one person that's meant to help them to learn these things, they're not learning. So we have children who are going into primary school years and then adolescence, um, completely dysregulated, which is why they're all breaking down in, in this mental health crisis. It's not a mystery, but you have to go back to the room where it happens. But aggression, aggression is one of the things that you're born with constitutionally. You know, in the old days, you used to go into a hospital, into a maternity ward. Thank goodness John Bowlby got rid of the maternity wards. You know, John Bowlby went into the hospitals in the UK, and he said, "No, no, no, those babies, they need to lie in with their mothers. They need to be. They c- they've come out of their mother's-"
27. 1:49:54 – 1:53:25

    How Children Cope With Absence

    1. CWChris Williamson1:49:54

       Mm. Okay. So what happens if a primary attachment figure isn't sufficiently available during those first few years?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:50:02

       So children develop coping mechanisms, but they aren't necessarily healthy coping mechanisms. So they're adaptations they have to make, and they're usually pathological, meaning they form what we call attachment disorders, which are defenses that help them to cope with the loss, strategies, if you will, um, to cope with the loss. And the kids who develop a strategy tend to survive more than the kids without a strategy, so they tend to do a little bit better. Um, that doesn't mean there aren't long-term consequences. So a strategy is, an avoidant attachment disorder is a strategy. "My mommy's left me. My daddy's left me in this place with strangers, and no one's coming, and I'm crying, and no one's gonna pick me up, and I'm just gonna have to manage on my own." And so it's something called learned helplessness, where they turn away from care.

    3. CWChris Williamson1:51:01

       Mm.

    4. EKErica Komisar1:51:02

       Um, and that's most closely correlated with, um, depression and difficulty trusting in, in relationships later on. Uh, an anxious attachment disorder, another strategy. Mm-hmm. It's a consistent strategy. If you, your mommy leaves, and when she comes back, you cling to her like a baby monkey, and you will not let her go, and you cry desperately, and you just cling to her, and the dialogue in the baby's head is, uh, is something like, "You know, my mommy left me. She's gonna leave me again," and it's the anticipation of loss. So we say anxiety is the anticipation of loss in the future. It's PTSD. So an anxious baby is clinging because they know their mommy's gonna leave again, and that's very much correlated with anxiety in the future. Then there are babies that don't have-- can't find a strategy, and so they end up cycling through all of the coping mechanisms.

    5. CWChris Williamson1:52:02

       Mm.

    6. EKErica Komisar1:52:02

       They might turn away from the mother on the reunion and then cling to the mother and then slap the mother because they're enraged and then turn away from the mother, cling to the mother, and then slap the mother, and we call this disorganized attachment disorder because it doesn't have a strategy. They can't... It's almost like, um, gears trying to find where they click in but never quite finding where they click in.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:52:28

       Mm.

    8. EKErica Komisar1:52:28

       And that's associated with that kind of emotional volatility is associated with borderline personality disorder later on. So we see the results of the mental health issues related to these attachment disorders, but we don't want to talk about it because we don't want to talk about the room where it happens.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:52:49

       Why? Why don't we want to talk about the room where it happens?

    10. EKErica Komisar1:52:51

        Because then we would have to question the system that we've created, which sends people-- which first of all values work and making money more than anything else. Careerism and materialism and going out into the world, values that more than anything and pushes women to go back into the workforce right away and also tells women that if they stay home, they're nothing, they're no one, they're invisible, they're meaningless, they're powerless, they're useless, they're without any value, and this is a message that's got to change if we want our children to be healthy.

28. 1:53:25 – 1:59:34

    The Discomfort of Sacrifice When Raising Healthy Children

    1. CWChris Williamson1:53:25

       What are the uncomfortable realities for modern women about raising healthy children?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:53:30

       That they have to sacrifice something, and men, too. It's both. It's sacrifice. It's the inability to deal with discomfort and sacrifice and doing without, uh, for, not forever, but in the years that your children need you the most. And you know what? I'm gonna be honest. Throughout your children's childhood, sacrifice is the word. If you can't make sacrifices, don't have children. Penelope Leach, a famous child devel-developmentalist, said well before me, "If you don't want to care for your children, don't have them. Just don't do it."

    3. CWChris Williamson1:54:04

       But people think that they're caring for their children. "I do care for my child. Yeah, I look after them at home-

    4. EKErica Komisar1:54:07

       Caring for children-

    5. CWChris Williamson1:54:07

       ... I go to work, I take them to daycare."

    6. EKErica Komisar1:54:09

       No. Ca-caring for children is actually being there from moment to moment to help to regulate their emotions and being present physically and emotionally e-- throughout childhood. I'm gonna say zero to three is a critical period of brain development, but throughout childhood, if you're not pri-- if you don't have a primary person for them to, to be primarily present when they come home from school, you know, when they're doing their homework at night, you know, when they are in their transitions of waking up, going to school, coming home from school, getting ready for bed, going to sleep, and then doing it all over again the next day. If they don't have someone to help them... So parents are the emotional digestive system for children throughout childhood.

    7. CWChris Williamson1:54:58

       They metabolize. Yep. Yep.

    8. EKErica Komisar1:55:02

       And whenever, when, when it happened that we [chuckles] decided that children somehow were born with the ability to metabolize their feelings and their experiences and the world around them, that's when it changed for children because they can't.They need us. They need, they need to depend on us in those years. And when we decided that we were all going to just do what was good for us and what felt good for us, that's when it changed for children.

    9. CWChris Williamson1:55:34

       How available is available? What does that look like?

    10. EKErica Komisar1:55:38

        So at some point, children go to school, and Maria Montessori called school work. She said they go to work. School is children's work. It's also play.

    11. CWChris Williamson1:55:49

        Child's work.

    12. EKErica Komisar1:55:49

        Yes. Child, child labor. [laughs] It's play. It should be play. It shouldn't be work, but they-- you could say it's their work. It w- learning, playing to learn, we wanna make it play-based, you know, when they're little, but it's their work. So when they go to work, you go to work. Now, one of you has to work and make enough money to, you know, have a roof over your head, whoever is that primary caregiver to that child. The idea is to work when they work. You know, I always say to young mothers when they have a baby, "Sleep when your baby sleeps." It's so tempting when you have a baby to, like, go do the dishes or, you know, write emails or whatever, you know, get on the Peloton or... I'm like, "No, no, no, no. Sleep when the baby sleeps. If you need time to yourself, then take a little time during the day while the baby's awake and have a mother's helper, have your mother come, have, you know, have..." You need to do it with, with people around. You can't do it in isolation. This weird idea that we, like, isolated ourselves with babies and spent eight hours alone. I mean, never was that way. You know, we-

    13. CWChris Williamson1:56:50

        Mm

    14. EKErica Komisar1:56:50

        ... lived in houses with extended family.

    15. CWChris Williamson1:56:52

        Pan-generational.

    16. EKErica Komisar1:56:53

        Yes. Yeah. Um, there's a wonderful man named Mark, uh, Friedman, who if you ever wanna have somebody on your podcast who says something really interesting, like me, he's been sort of-- he's sort of, how should I say? He's treated badly. [laughs]

    17. CWChris Williamson1:57:08

        Pillarized.

    18. EKErica Komisar1:57:08

        Yes. Um, controversial.

    19. CWChris Williamson1:57:10

        Oh, he's-

    20. EKErica Komisar1:57:11

        Because he says-

    21. CWChris Williamson1:57:11

        He's among friends here

    22. EKErica Komisar1:57:12

        ... he says we've lost, um, we've lost extended family generational living, and it's disastrous to us as human beings. And, uh, it seems like a basic thing, but he actually talks about the origin of it, and he talks about the origin of, like, nursing homes and assisted living and how that was founded by real estate developers.

    23. CWChris Williamson1:57:32

        I was about to say one of my friends, Adam Lane Smith, attachment dude. Uh.

    24. EKErica Komisar1:57:36

        I know Adam.

    25. CWChris Williamson1:57:37

        Wonderful guy.

    26. EKErica Komisar1:57:38

        Yeah.

    27. CWChris Williamson1:57:38

        And he's got this-- He, his-- He was the first person to introduce me to this idea. I, I, I can't remember the tweet, but it's something like, "Never forget that moving away from home and not living in pan-generational housing for your entire life is a psyop made up by mortgage companies to keep you poor and alone."

    28. EKErica Komisar1:57:54

        And it was real estate developers, actually. They said, "We are going to create these adolescent living for older people and tell them that your family doesn't matter, but only you matter." Here it is. There it is.

    29. CWChris Williamson1:58:06

        Adolescent living for older people-

    30. EKErica Komisar1:58:08

        Yeah, yeah
29. 1:59:34 – 2:09:16

    The Toughest Realisations For Modern Mothers

    1. CWChris Williamson1:59:34

       Yeah. What are the toughest realizations that women have to accept, given that a lot of pride and, and w- worth by society is laid at the feet of what the what's your job projections, and what are you gonna do with your career, and when are you gonna go back?

    2. EKErica Komisar1:59:47

       A- a- again, that's a societal, societal shift that h- we h- that has to change. It has to happen because if we only value work outside the home as valuable work, then women will continue to feel internal conflict over something they feel pulled towards. So, in a way, I think what I've done with my books and with my platform is give women permission and tell them that your work is valuable. What you do when you care for your children is probably the most valuable thing you'll ever do in your life.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:00:23

       Mm.

    4. EKErica Komisar2:00:23

       That doesn't diminish your career, and in fact, whatever career you had, whatever skills you built, you don't lose them. You don't get amnesia and forget them all. You don't become-- And this is, you know, you'd say we have terrorized women into believing that they lose everything if they take time off, that they lose all their skills and all their position in their careers, and it's just a bunch of baloney because you never lose your skills. And if you had an identity in a work or a profession, you don't lose that. You always have that. In some way, it's a part of you, and it will always be a part of you, and you'll come back and use it in whatever way you use it. Um, I used to fly to visit my sister in London. She lived in London her whole adult life. AndEvery time she'd pick me up at the airport, she would drive me a different way back. It was kind of crazy making. She'd drive me a different way back to her house, and I'd be like, "Karen, what, what's going on?" She's like, "Oh," she said, "I love going different ways-"

    5. CWChris Williamson2:01:28

       Hmm

    6. EKErica Komisar2:01:28

       ... 'cause you never know, like, what you're gonna find, and you might find actually a more interesting way and a shortcut or, you know, might be a better way." And I thought that's sort of an interesting metaphor that when you take time off or slow down when you have a baby, you never know how transformative having a baby will be, so you never know what kind of work you're gonna wanna do in the future. It may be the same kind of work. It may be something completely different in the future.

    7. CWChris Williamson2:01:55

       How fascinating that you've lived two decades, three decades, four decades of your life with, "This is what I like and this is why I'm here and this is what I'm into, and I know me and I know what's best for me." And then someone comes along and sort of shakes the Etch A Sketch-

    8. EKErica Komisar2:02:10

       That's right

    9. CWChris Williamson2:02:10

       ... that you'd drawn your life with.

    10. EKErica Komisar2:02:12

        That's right.

    11. CWChris Williamson2:02:13

        And you go, "Oh, that was such a existential upheaval. Actually, maybe I... Huh, I like people."

    12. EKErica Komisar2:02:22

        Yeah. [laughs]

    13. CWChris Williamson2:02:23

        "I like people. I didn't think, I didn't think that I liked people."

    14. EKErica Komisar2:02:27

        Yeah.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:02:27

        But there's this obsession with objective metrics of success, and we often trade-- I kind of got this thing that I can't unsee anymore, that we trade, uh, hidden metrics for observable metrics all the time.

    16. EKErica Komisar2:02:40

        Yeah.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:02:40

        So a hidden metric might be the quality of your sleep or the peacefulness of your mind-

    18. EKErica Komisar2:02:45

        Right

    19. CWChris Williamson2:02:45

        ... as you get to go in the shower, or the quality of your relationship with your partner, or how deeply you and your baby get to connect. But what are the things that are more measurable, that are more objective? What's the car that you drive, the postcode that you live in, the salary that you've got, the job title you have? Uh, how important is the company that you're working for? How many other people know you? Followers online, social media, bank account. And it is, it- that's the bit that I really, really struggle to sort of square the circle of, which is nobody loves big corporations, and almost everybody fucking works for them. Almost everyone is working for this nameless, faceless organization to whom you are just employee number one thousand two hundred and twenty-four.

    20. EKErica Komisar2:03:30

        Mm-hmm.

    21. CWChris Williamson2:03:31

        And yet, that's supposed to be the thing that if it's taken away from a mother or a woman in order to become a mother, is the worst possible scenario that she can go through. I feel like I need to do this fucking throat clearing thing because when I don't, the internet comes for me. Absolutely, in the past, women have been financial prisoners of marriages where they haven't been able to leave.

    22. EKErica Komisar2:03:54

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:03:54

        That is not something that we want.

    24. EKErica Komisar2:03:55

        No.

    25. CWChris Williamson2:03:55

        I think every woman should be able to have a mar- have a family or not have a family freely, and that that should be afforded-

    26. EKErica Komisar2:04:02

        Choice. Choice

    27. CWChris Williamson2:04:02

        ... that should be afforded through their financial freedom. Like, that is important.

    28. EKErica Komisar2:04:06

        Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson2:04:07

        Also, they want to feel like they're an agent. They want to feel like they've got sovereignty in the world. They want to feel like they can do things, they've accomplished things. But what is good to accomplish? The fucking Industrial Revolution was a hundred and fifty, a hundred and twenty years ago. It wasn't that long ago when this thing really got going. So to talk about what's important and, I mean, even think about how curated it was that the school bells used in schools in the UK were the same ones that they used in the factories.

    30. EKErica Komisar2:04:37

        Mm-hmm.
30. 2:09:16 – 2:13:17

    Why Trust is Everything

    1. CWChris Williamson2:09:16

       W- what does the evidence suggest around, let's say it's a family where the man is able to provide enough that the mother doesn't need to work. What are the outcomes of someone, of, of a woman choosing to not go back to work versus going back? Is this just super idiosyncratic? It depends on how you feel work is valuable to you or?

    2. EKErica Komisar2:09:40

       Yeah. I mean, I think that part of what's happened, too, is that divorce is so high, and, um, women are so afraid to depend on men. So we've also told women not to depend on men, and we tell men not to depend on women. And so, and then we wonder why nobody this young wants to get married and have children. We told them, "Don't depend on anybody. You can't trust men."

    3. CWChris Williamson2:10:06

       Right.

    4. EKErica Komisar2:10:07

       Uh, "They're untrustworthy." So you don't wanna form a collaborative team with someone who you can't trust. I mean, you have to have secure attachment enough to make good choices of who you trust and then to trust them.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:10:21

       Oh, so it becomes this self-perpetuating loop.

    6. EKErica Komisar2:10:24

       It does.

    7. CWChris Williamson2:10:24

       You have somebody who is unable to be securely attached, therefore their ability to discern is poor, therefore they choose poorly.

    8. EKErica Komisar2:10:31

       That's right.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:10:32

       They get a story that reinforces the be-

    10. EKErica Komisar2:10:34

        And around and round we go. It's called neurotic repetition. Freud called it neurotic repetition. We repea-

    11. CWChris Williamson2:10:40

        What's it referred to as in mod- in modern times?

    12. EKErica Komisar2:10:42

        We repeat patterns of behavior that are unhealthy, and so, right. So if we don't trust, if we're a woman who doesn't trust a man to lean on, then we're not willing to form a team with that person because there may be times when our husbands lean on us. I mean, you know, [chuckles] I mean, I'm not exactly a perfect example, but my husband worked super hard in his practice, uh, and starting his nonprofit when our kids were really young, and I took time off with each kid and then, and then worked very little. Very, very, very little. Just enough, I had a deal with my husband, just enough to pay the mother's helper who, who helped me during the day with three kids. And, um, and now I'm running all over the world writing books, seeing more patients than I ever saw when I was young, and he's spending, still in his practice, but spending more time skiing, hiking, seeing friends, doing the relationship building that he couldn't do when he was young when I was building relationships with other mothers-

    13. CWChris Williamson2:11:51

        Yeah

    14. EKErica Komisar2:11:51

        ... and so and so what I, what I would say-

    15. CWChris Williamson2:11:54

        Isn't that cool?

    16. EKErica Komisar2:11:54

        ... is you can do everything in life.

    17. CWChris Williamson2:11:56

        Isn't-

    18. EKErica Komisar2:11:56

        You just can't do it all at once

    19. CWChris Williamson2:11:57

        ... just not all at once. Isn't that fucking cool to think about, okay, we're gonna do this for the rest of time. Me and you are gonna do this for the rest of time. We're in our 20s or 30s.

    20. EKErica Komisar2:12:06

        We're in it together.

    21. CWChris Williamson2:12:06

        We're gonna do this for the rest of time.

    22. EKErica Komisar2:12:08

        Yeah.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:12:08

        We do not need to win the first play.

    24. EKErica Komisar2:12:11

        No.

    25. CWChris Williamson2:12:11

        It does not need to be me just dribbling it down the court in order to be able to do that, but it-

    26. EKErica Komisar2:12:15

        But, but you do if you're scared that the person is going to leave you, if you're always waiting for the penny to drop, and we have told women to not trust men.

    27. CWChris Williamson2:12:23

        Mm.

    28. EKErica Komisar2:12:24

        And as a result, maybe men have become less trustworthy. I'm not sure whether it is a, it is a vicious cycle, you know? But we have told young people not to trust each other.

    29. CWChris Williamson2:12:34

        I think it-

    30. EKErica Komisar2:12:35

        It's a te- they-- we've told them it's a, it's a, it's a tentative connection-
31. 2:13:17 – 2:23:26

    The Problems Associated With Female Breadwinners

    1. EKErica Komisar2:13:17

       [laughs]

    2. CWChris Williamson2:13:17

       What are the, what are the problems associated with a female primary breadwinner?

    3. EKErica Komisar2:13:19

       So one of the issues is that, um, fathers do need to be trainedTo be sensitive, empathic nurturers. Not all. Some get it down pretty quickly, but remember the playful tactile stimulation is important, but the sensitive empathic nurturing is more important in the early years. So the father who wears the baby skin to skin and feeds the baby as if he's breastfeeding, makes eye contact, left side cradles, looks at the baby when he's feeding the baby with a bottle.

    4. CWChris Williamson2:13:51

       Why left?

    5. EKErica Komisar2:13:52

       Oh, left side cradling is right brain to right brain connection. One of the ways we diagnose postpartum depression is if I handed you a baby, do we have a doll anywhere? Would you grab the baby on the left side or the right side? Well, now I'm telling you, so y- you're g- you're gonna-- it'll influence you. But generally, um, someone who is securely attached, a mother, will grab the baby on the left side. Even though you have two breasts that you feed with, usually a healthy mother, an emotionally healthy mother, has a larger left breast than she does a right breast.

    6. CWChris Williamson2:14:24

       An emotionally healthy mother has a larger left breast.

    7. EKErica Komisar2:14:28

       When she's breastfeeding, because, because she feeds primarily on the left side, because that's the side where she feels most connected to the baby's right brain.

    8. CWChris Williamson2:14:36

       No fucking way.

    9. EKErica Komisar2:14:37

       Yes fucking way.

    10. CWChris Williamson2:14:38

        Hang on. Hang on. Is this not... What-

    11. EKErica Komisar2:14:41

        It's not left-handed, right-handed.

    12. CWChris Williamson2:14:43

        No, no, no, no, no.

    13. EKErica Komisar2:14:43

        Yeah.

    14. CWChris Williamson2:14:43

        What is, what is the thing about, um, eye to eye that-

    15. EKErica Komisar2:14:49

        It's, it's crossed.

    16. CWChris Williamson2:14:50

        Yes.

    17. EKErica Komisar2:14:50

        So left brain, your right brain connects with the baby's right brain.

    18. CWChris Williamson2:14:53

        Is there not something-- I swear that I had, I swear that I had a conversation with a NLP and conversation expert, and she was talking about focusing on the other person's left eye.

    19. EKErica Komisar2:15:05

        Mm-hmm.

    20. CWChris Williamson2:15:06

        That looking at that-

    21. EKErica Komisar2:15:07

        Mm-hmm.

    22. CWChris Williamson2:15:07

        Not looking at that one.

    23. EKErica Komisar2:15:08

        Mm-hmm.

    24. CWChris Williamson2:15:09

        Looking at that one.

    25. EKErica Komisar2:15:09

        Mm-hmm.

    26. CWChris Williamson2:15:10

        Do you know this stuff? Do you know what I'm talking about?

    27. EKErica Komisar2:15:11

        It's the same, it's the same research.

    28. CWChris Williamson2:15:13

        It's just reflecting this in adulthood.

    29. EKErica Komisar2:15:14

        It's how do you connect right brain to right brain to another person.

    30. CWChris Williamson2:15:16

        But because it's flipped.
32. 2:23:26 – 2:29:33

    Why Emotional Presence Matters Just as Much as Physical

    1. CWChris Williamson2:23:26

       You have mentioned, and we've spoken a lot about the physical presence.

    2. EKErica Komisar2:23:30

       Hmm.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:23:31

       But you keep saying another word as well, which is emotional presence.

    4. EKErica Komisar2:23:33

       Yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:23:35

       What's that? What's, what is emotional attunement in this context? How important is that? What's the role it plays?

    6. EKErica Komisar2:23:40

       Well, you need both. So, you know, this whole idea of quality time is a ruse, and it's just that. It's not, it's not a real thing. It was made up to justify parents' absence. Um, children need-- You are their digestive system. You have to be there throughout the day, or somebody has to be there throughout the day that they really trust and feel secure with, who is their primary person, to process, to digest, right? Like a stomach, like a kidney, like a liv- like to digest. And I think that we have stopped thinking about parents' presence as something that is consistent because it didn't suit the narrative that everybody should go out and work in the corporate world or in the world outside. So quality time is a ruse. Children need both physical presence and emotional. So you can be there physically and, uh, be emotionally checked out. It's possible to be there physically and be depressed or distracted-

    7. CWChris Williamson2:24:36

       Hmm

    8. EKErica Komisar2:24:36

       ... or resentful, but it is not, and I say it is not possible to be there emotionally if you are not there physically. This is a bunch of baloney that we are feeding parents.

    9. CWChris Williamson2:24:47

       Oh, this magical thinking that quality time makes up for it.

    10. EKErica Komisar2:24:50

        Magical. That's right, that you can put your child on the shelf like a vase, and it's going to be... Or like a picture frame, and it's going to be in the same position-

    11. CWChris Williamson2:24:59

        Or just suspended development

    12. EKErica Komisar2:25:00

        ... when we wa- this is suspended, right? [laughs]

    13. CWChris Williamson2:25:00

        Yeah, exactly. Okay.

    14. EKErica Komisar2:25:01

        Until you come home again.

    15. CWChris Williamson2:25:03

        Can, can children tell the difference between a mother who is there but doesn't want to be-

    16. EKErica Komisar2:25:08

        Yes

    17. CWChris Williamson2:25:08

        ... and one who-

    18. EKErica Komisar2:25:09

        Yes

    19. CWChris Williamson2:25:09

        ... is there but does want to be?

    20. EKErica Komisar2:25:10

        Yes. Yes. They can also tell the difference between a mother who has to go to work and who doesn't want to go to work. They can feel the pain in that mother, particularly if that mother shares it, and that's, you know... In other words, a housekeeper or a babysitter or someone who works in a factory who's a single mother who's raising three children and has no option.

    21. CWChris Williamson2:25:32

        Hmm.

    22. EKErica Komisar2:25:33

        Um, she comes home at six o'clock, and she doesn't leave again because she's not seen her child all day, and sheShe tells her child, and she tells her children, "I wanted to be with you today, and I didn't want to be at work. Where I really wanted to be was right by your side." And her children can feel with great authenticity that she means that. The problem is children know when their mothers and fathers don't want to be with them.

    23. CWChris Williamson2:25:59

        This is, this is the thing. Reading all of your work, the thing that has struck me the most is this weird panopticon situation that we've primarily put mothers in, or women in that are preparing to become mothers. In advance of having kids, I think a lot of women are really nervous. "I'm gonna have to let go of a lot of things that give me status and acclaim and prestige and independence and a sense of progress." And then once they have their kids, they feel like a second-class citizen because everybody else is doing things. I was having a conversation with a mother of three who's a good friend, and she was saying, "I was so envious of people that had kids during COVID because it didn't feel like they were missing out on anything."

    24. EKErica Komisar2:26:43

        Yeah. And, yeah, that's right.

    25. CWChris Williamson2:26:46

        I was like, hang on a second.

    26. EKErica Komisar2:26:47

        That's right.

    27. CWChris Williamson2:26:48

        What do you mean missing out on anything? They would-- That was, that is the thing. The thing is the thing.

    28. EKErica Komisar2:26:53

        Yeah. Yeah.

    29. CWChris Williamson2:26:53

        But there is this-

    30. EKErica Komisar2:26:54

        FOMO
33. 2:29:33 – 2:30:20

    Where to Find Erica

    1. CWChris Williamson2:29:33

       Erica Komisar, ladies and gentlemen. Erica, you rule. You're so great, and I love your work, and thank you for that. Where should people go to check out everything you've got going on?

    2. EKErica Komisar2:29:41

       Ww.komisar.com, and I have three books here, which I'm gonna give all to Chris.

    3. CWChris Williamson2:29:47

       Oh.

    4. EKErica Komisar2:29:47

       I have the first, Being There, about zero to three. I have Chicken Little: The Sky Isn't Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents. And I have my newest book, which is A Parent's Guide to Divorce. So-- And this is how you raise, uh, emotionally resilient children while going through the separation and breakup process. So you can see all those books and buy all those books, uh, with the connections from my website, but you can also make appointments to see me, and yeah.

    5. CWChris Williamson2:30:17

       You're fantastic. I really hope that you keep going.

    6. EKErica Komisar2:30:19

       Thank you. Thank you for having me

Episode duration: 2:30:22