Is it a little bit of like a collective action problem, like a game theory type thing where it's everybody secretly wants to be more, give their kids a longer leash, but they're afraid that if they're the ones who do it, all the other parents are going

to judge them? So I don't think so. I think it's primarily an entire generation that has lost confidence that they know what they're doing because they think that parenting requires a professional. If I don't know about, this is what the neuroscientists and who are parenting experts will tell you the popular ones. Basically, if you don't understand the fight or flight response and the lizard brain, you can't raise a child. It's ludicrous. It's nonsense. But nonetheless, they've really made insecure a generation of parents who had come from a tradition of pretty good parenting. We're pretty good at this in this country. We have been for generations. We have raised wonderful people to adulthood who are strong and brave, who can take risks and build up great companies and do great things. And now we have raised a generation that is not producing any tech founders because they're afraid to take any risks. And I've heard that from so many employers that no matter how smart these kids are, they won't take a chance on their own. You have to tell them everything, even though they have great grounding in whatever it is, the sciences or whatever it is, they have all the knowledge they need, they're afraid to do for themselves. It's just from

personal experience. I would say the level of talent in Gen Z is the highest I've seen and the level of execution is the lowest I've seen. I mean, it's just my experience has just been finding these incredibly smart, brilliant, interesting 22 to 25 year olds who don't get things done. Right. That's been

experienced. By the way, that's a classic side effect of too much therapy, which is you don't trust your ability to do things without checking in with an expert. You feel like you have to check in with a grown up before you do anything. It's the way we've conditioned these kids and it's what they are taking with them to the workplace. If you haven't given me specific instructions, I don't know what to do the second I run into any problem or any obstacle.

Maybe I should just hire their moms with them. That's what

people are doing. That's

literally, no, no, no, not hiring the

mom, but they're hiring the older generation. Yeah. You're seeing this from employers. They're saying, I want the older generation. And it's like, it's ridiculous. These kids do have the ability, they do have the skills in theory. They're just afraid to execute. Just imagining doing a job interview with a kid and his mom

is simultaneously. I'm curious. Let's start internationally. Is this an Anglo thing? Is it a North American thing? Is it

a Western culture thing? It's a Western thing. It's a Western thing. Yeah. And people who come to our country from other cultures have a lot more sense of about child rearing and they're generally horrified by what they're seeing in American parents. And they say the same thing. I know you. I love talking to immigrants. First of all, because they'll tell you the truth. They don't. They're not so afraid to say the truth the way Americans are. And they will tell you these parents have no authority. And by the way, if you interview immigrants and it almost doesn't matter where they're from, they generally have much more orderly children who are genuinely much more respectful of adults and their parents. And that's where we used to be in this country. And we desperately need to get back to that because look, a child who's never learned to show respect for his parents will then be a child who never shows respect for his teacher and never shows respect for a boss. And I think that's what we're seeing. I found it

interesting when I was doing research for this episode. I look tried to look up mental health interventions by race in the United States. First of all, extremely difficult data to find for whatever reason. And then when you do find it, what you find is that white people have way more mental health issues than other races. But the explanation was funny because the researchers that I found at least they were like, well, it's because minorities don't feel comfortable. They're

all repressed seeking

help. Isn't that nice? They're disadvantaged. I'm sitting there, I'm like, wait a second.

You know, I know that self flattering bit of nonsense. I'll tell you, when they actually call this the Latino immigrant paradox in the psychological literature, it's a paradox that Latinos who come to this country from lower socioeconomic backgrounds are do so much better in terms of anxiety and depression and

mental health. That's not a

paradox. They're giving them better lives. They're giving them authority. They're giving the community. They're making them help out with chores and contribute so they feel they matter. They're giving them all the things that we should be giving them. That's not a paradox. It's something to celebrate and admire, but it's not a paradox.

Yeah. What about

within the country? Do you see this evenly distributed within the country or is it worse in some pockets than others? It's a good question. There's some indication. Jean Twangie did some research in her book Generations where she reported that even

though teenage girls are the worst demographic in terms of mental health suffering, teenage boys from liberal families were generally had worse mental health than teenage girls from politically conservative families. The question is why, and people speculate on many different things. We know it's not social media because teenage girls are on way more social media, whatever their parents' politics. The question is why, and I would guess that the answer has something to do with what I wrote the book about, which is that parents from conservative families tend to be more religious. They tend to be more comfortable asserting authority. They tend to have more community around them, getting kids to participate and contribute, whether it's showing up for church or whatever. They tend to have more structured lives. Now they're also not scaring the hell out of their kids about the climate catastrophe, right? Which is another huge problem. I mean, an entire industry has arisen. They're so excited to treat climate anxiety that there are now climate therapists. So if you don't see the conflict of interest in that... We need

jobs. Exactly.

To do it for the economy. Exactly. Yeah, I mean, just anecdotally, it's been interesting moving. I grew up in Texas and moving the California in particular. I mean, so I lived in New York City for a long time. New York's a little bit different. It is definitely liberal, but New York, you just, you get shit done. Everybody has to get shit done all the time. And so there's not really much time to sit and dwell or worry about certain things. It's been interesting moving the California. I have definitely noticed just socially that there is a lot more self-consciousness around basic day-to-day behaviors. One of the things that I have found really surprising is that I will simply go to a lunch or a dinner party with a group of people and people, they will try to curate the conversation to make sure that everybody feels included, that everybody's sharing something vulnerable, that everybody's like talking about, like there's talking points where I'm like, can we just have dinner? Like, let's just hang out and have dinner. Like, what's wrong with that? I find that it backfires. It actually prevents me from getting to know people because now, once the conversation becomes curated, now you're seeing, you're kind of seeing a presentation of somebody and it that's designed to elicit certain emotions instead of just having that spontaneous. And I think there's a lot to human interaction in human life that is only meaningful if it is spontaneous and unconditional in the way it emerges. Like, as soon as you try to control it, and this kind of ties back to the school counselor thing or the SEL thing, like, as soon as you try to control an emotional response, it starts feeling inauthentic. It stops feeling as meaningful and purposeful. And I think as well-intentioned as it is to try to intervene in people's lives and mitigate anxiety and promote happiness and joy as much as possible, sometimes the intervention itself robs that happiness of any

sense of meaningfulness. I totally agree. And

here's the thing, it denies our experience as humans because as human beings, we have this amazing variety of personality, of all kinds of likes and dislikes. And you know what? We can roll with it. We have friends that are nothing like us, and that's fun. And when you try to make everything into a group help session, right? So, you know, one of these self-help sessions where everyone says the expected thing. Yeah, you're not friends anymore. Those aren't your friends. And by the way, it's the same thing with raising kids. You know why people love their parents? Because they're theirs. Because that's my mom, even if

she's crazy.

And that's what used to be. And now instead, we have parents pretending to be amateur shrinks. And by the way, the rising generation is cutting off its parents and rates we've never seen. They're deciding that their loving parents were toxic. And I'm not talking about abusive parents, because when I interview psychologists who treat them, they say it's not abusive parents who get cut off. It's actually loving parents. And the, and the, you know, young adult goes to therapy and they just are like, I can't deal with you anymore. You're toxic. I'm done. You emotionally abused me. And it's over slight, you know, things that were said that hurt feelings and that sort of thing. Or maybe you were, you know, they didn't translate across the generations, you know. And I think what you said is right, like all this professionalizing of social relations has robbed those relations of their vitality of the quirks that make us love them. Right? I mean, sometimes you're with friends and you try to explain to someone else why something was so funny or why you can't even communicate it. Yeah. Because it's so particular to your experience. And we're losing that when we try to mass market all of

our social relationships. Yeah. And I, you know, I would argue that really what friendship is, is having people in your life that you can feel whatever you feel around, right? It's like, if I go to dinner with somebody and I'm just in a cranky ass mood and just want to complain and bitch for two hours, that's what friendship is. You're there with them when they're feeling bad. You're there with them when they're feeling good. You're there when they're anxious. You're there when they're happy and joyful. Like it's trying to control the outcome removes the significance of it. It's a weird place. I do think people have such good intentions around it, both in the psychological world, the self-help world, the therapeutic world. Like, I do think all these people think they're doing a good thing. I definitely see it in my industry. I think, you know, the straight up like fraud and charlatan, it's the minority. It's nine times out of 10. It's somebody who actually thinks they're doing a lot of good and that they're helping a lot of people. They're just not looking at the second or third order effects. For sure. But, but I think

that their role got way too big in our society. I mean, what made therapists are always giving advice like, now you should say, I'm setting a boundary. Well, if you're in an argument with your spouse and you hear, I'm setting a boundary. Now, the therapist is standing there between you and your spouse. Right? I mean, what a bizarre thing to say to someone else, right? Now you're not even relating as human beings, right? Or as friends or as lovers or whatever it is. Are they well-meaning? Yes. But what makes them friendship experts? Do they have good friendships? I don't know. And you see the ones who are parenting experts who either never raise children or we don't see their children, the product of their great advice. It all sounds good. It sounds intuitively like getting on your knees to a child and saying, I see that you're very angry. Can we talk about that? That sounds like something so compassionate and nice. Unfortunately, it's not what a kid needs. No, that's

what you would say to an adult who knows how to process their anger and look at it objectively and understand if it's married it or not. A child that has none of those perspectives. The child

is just anger.

Right. And also a child when someone who's with their mom, not a professional or a mom, like a professional inhabiting their mother's body, right? Like they want their mom. Isn't that what we all want? Right? You want your husband, not someone who's like, I'm setting a boundary. You know, like it makes our relationships, which we love so awkward and artificial and professional. And I just don't see a lot of that as moving the ball forward.

It's ironic. I guess that's another kind of facet of this paradox that relationship advice is at an all-time high is more well known than ever before. There's more books on it than ever before, yet people are lonely or have fewer friends are getting married less, having children less, keeping in touch with their parents less. They're more socially isolated than they've ever been.

Yeah, it's sort of like junior high in a way. Like in junior high, all the boys like the same girl, right? Because they are like pretty sure they all want the same, you know, the blonde girl, whatever it is. And then you grow up and you're like, actually, I want something different for me. And we're almost going back to this idea of the therapist to put proved friendship, the mental health approved way to be with people. You know what the truth is? We love people who are really wacky.

And they're just

dear to us. And that's okay. Because you know what, we're pretty wacky too. And we lost sight in that somewhere along the line that you can be however you want with your kids, as long as you're not abusive, of course, or anything like that. But you know, we all have different ways. I had this, I'll give you an example. My dad, who I've always been very, very close to, he used to call me ugly. Now he wouldn't call me ugly in an insulting way. He would wake me up and be like, come on, ugly, let's go. And it was always with a smile. And I, as I got to adulthood, I was like, God, I'm glad I never told a therapist that. Because it was kind of our joke. It was just our joke. I like, I know that my dad thought I was beautiful. I never doubted that. He made me more secure and how I looked than anyone. You know, but he always said with a smile, hey, ugly, and it always made me laugh. Like no matter how angry I was or upset I was, it made me laugh. Now, if I tried to explain to someone else why that was okay, it's hard to do. I don't know why it was okay. It worked with his sense of humor and mine.