The Lie that Ruined a Generation - Brett Cooper (4K)

You got married.

I did.

How's that been?

It's the best thing I've ever done. Seriously. It's- it's... We got married on, um, March 30th of this year, so very recently. And best day of my life, best decision. Obviously, it's like a baby marriage. It's very new. Um, but it's been amazing. I'm grateful for him. I'm grateful for the institution of marriage. It's just... Yeah, it's been wonderful.

Getting married at 22 is a pretty radical thing-

Yeah.

...to do for someone with a career.

Yes, it is. It is. It was, um... It's interesting. I have always known I wanted to be married. I've always known that I wanted to be a mother. You know, I had a career in Hollywood. I was a child actor for 10-plus years. And I remember I had a conversation with my best friend at the time. We were walking through Burbank, I think I was, like, 15 years old, and we were talking about our dreams and hopes. And she had just, you know... She was pinned for a new series, and she was like, "This is all I've ever wanted," and we were talking about all of that. And I brought up a concern that I had had basically since I started in this industry and started working with adults, 'cause that's one of the cool things and also something that gets very dicey in Hollywood, is that you're working with adults constantly. For me, in my experience, it ended up working out very well 'cause I was exposed to people who were much more successful than I was, were further along in their careers. I got to see how they were operating, how they balanced their career and family and marriage, and I did not like what I saw. And so, like, in the back of my mind, I was like, "I know that I want to be the type of mother that my mom is, where she walked away from her career and she dedicated every fiber of her being to being a mother." That was her career. It was like, you know, very, very intentional. "I'm going to raise the best human beings possible." I wanted to be that engaged. And I saw the mothers that I worked with on shows, the fathers. I saw the 35-year-old series regulars on Netflix who were still living in condos with four other roommates, who couldn't afford to buy a house or support a family in Los Angeles. So, in my teen years, I was just like, "This is not... This isn't compatible. This isn't what I want." And I'd been, like, wrestling with that. And so in this conversation with my friend, I said, "You know, that isn't really, at the end of the day, what I want. What I want is to be a wife and a mother." And I never, like, actually expressed that to her, even though she was one of my best friends. And she tur- whipped her head around and was like, "You are willing to give up your career for that?" And I didn't even say that. I had not insinuated it. I was just saying, you know, "At the end of the day, that's what I want." She was like, "You're willing to walk away from everything and sacrifice. You will never be as successful because that's what you want." She was like, "I'm not willing to do that." And so it was kind of like the people who wanted to be married and wanted to be mothers didn't want it enough, um, and that those choices, those personal choices, weren't valid. And so that ha- that had always been what I had heard. And I was undeterred, obviously, and so, yes, it is pretty radical. But even in this industry of, like, being in media, being more on the right, I still heard it. Still heard it from conservatives, of like, "You're on the up and up. Are you sure you want to do that?" From people that are pro-family and pro-marriage. I was like-