“There is an imbalance”
Topics Discussed
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Episode Resources
Joe Manchin: Why I'm voting against the For the People Act (Charleston Gazette-Mail)
Congress Needs to Defend Vote Counting, Not Just Vote Casting (The New York Times)
Why some Democrats are quietly unhappy with the House’s big voting rights bill (Vox)
New Hampshire Town Clerks Overwhelmingly Oppose H.R. 1 (Patch)
Transcript
Julia Edelstein: [00:00:00] So as parents, what we're really trying to do is ease people back into, I don't even want to say normal life, but some sort of busier life while helping them maintain what I think are like a new set of values that the pandemic made clear of. There were some major silver linings to the pandemic for families. One was, people felt a lot less competitive in terms of everything. Like how they looked, how their house looked, how their kids performed in school, whether they got the lead in the play, whether they were the star forward on the soccer team, like all of that stuff became very small and we realized.How insignificant it was
Sarah: This is Sarah
Beth: And Beth.
Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics.
Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.
Hello, and thank you so much for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, we're going to talk about what's going on with voting rights across the country and in the United States Senate, then we're sharing our conversation with Julia Edelstein, the editor in chief of Parents Magazine, who talked to us about how the pandemic impacted parenting for lots of different age groups and what the long-term ramifications on our culture might be and then outside of politics, we're responding to a question about how to navigate marital conflict, which after all does seem to have been a widespread side effect of the stress caused by pandemic parenting.
Sarah: [00:01:47] Before we get started, we wanted to give a quick shout out to Steve and Mariah. They've been on our show before. They're the host of Swing Left's Podcast, How We Win. Swing Left is a grassroots organization that gives you effective ways to make a difference in the elections [00:02:00] that determine the balance of power in our country. That's something we hear from you guys all the time. We talk about the news and you say, okay, but what can I do about it? And How We Win is an inspiring, insightful podcast. It'll give you hope with interviews with experts, activists, and ordinary Americans about that question, yes, but what do I do about it? So check out, Swing Left's, How We Win if you have a chance.
Beth: [00:02:20] One of Swing Left, mottos is we don't agonize, we organize, which is probably a good transition to talking about what's going on with voting rights across the country. Of course, the former president is out and about again, telling folks still that he won the last election and that, uh, the way the votes were made and counted was illegitimate. We also have a new op-ed from Senator Joe mansion in a West Virginia newspaper. I'm hesitant to say it's new though, because he's just saying things that he said a million different ways in different formats, but he's put them quite concisely in an op-ed to share that [00:03:00] he will be voting against the For the People Act when it comes up for a vote in the United States Senate, and that he will not be disturbing the filibuster, he will not vote to disturb the filibuster in any way to advance that legislation.
Sarah: [00:03:14] So I guess, let me get the parts of the piece and the, you know, general philosophy of Joe Manchin that upsets me out of the way first, because I do have some nuance here, but I'm, we'll have to exercise this anger. When he said in this piece that, you know, voting rights is too important to be handled on a partisan basis and that everything has to be bipartisan, I think that sounds great. And I wish that the state legislators around the country felt the same way, but they don't and so we have very partisan pushes sometimes under the cover of darkness in certain states where there is not even a glimpse at the other side, there is not even a not or bow to bipartisanship. It is a intensely partisan [00:04:00] effort on the behalf of Republican state legislators to undermine voting rights and so, you know, I think that sounds great.
The problem is the other side is not playing by that same philosophy. And so that part of it really makes me mad because I just feel like it is a little bit delusional and just to stand up and say, well, it's just so important. We have to use both sides on voting rights and, you know, I think he's doing a lot of other smart political things here, and we can get into that in a minute, but just the idea that like, well, what I'm operating under is that some things are so important they have to bipartisan. I mean, that would have sounded great in 2008, but that's not the world we live in anymore and you know, if you want to make a case on why you still don't want, you want to still want to protect the filibuster or why HR1 is not the legislation to do this, which, which I think there is a case to be made fine, but don't build it on the idea that bipartisanship is, is so important because the other side is not willing to be bi-partisan, they've made that abundantly clear over and [00:05:00] over and over again and so I'm just really frustrated with the foundation of his argument. Being the bipartisanship is so important because I don't think that's available to us anymore, especially on this. Thank you for letting me get that off my chest.
Beth: [00:05:13] I like what you did there and saying I have some nuance, but first I need to get this out because I think that that is like a good model for how most of us have to process information and so I just applaud you for, for articulating that. You know, what I think is hard about that point, which I don't really disagree with is that we're sitting in a state that did bipartisan voting legislation. In Kentucky, we did have bipartisan legislation around voting post COVID to integrate what we learned. It didn't go as far as I would have liked it to, but it's good legislation and I think the fact that it was done on a bipartisan basis is really important for the state and so that's the tension I feel about it, you know?
Sarah: [00:05:52] Well, I think that HR1 is not responding to legislation and Kentucky responding to the legislation in Georgia and Texas and [00:06:00] Florida and that's the peril, right? If we're going to talk about the problem and let's talk about the problem and the problem is not the bipartisan legislation, the very little bipartisan legislation coming out of places like Kentucky. The problem is that legislation coming out of Texas and Georgia and Florida and Arizona, and a million other states, I can list that.
Beth: [00:06:16] I get that. I'm just saying, I don't think Joe Manchin is living in an alternative reality for the entirety of the United States, right? Because there it is conceivable that you could do bi-partisan voting legislation. We've, we've just seen it happen in our state.
Sarah: [00:06:34] Is it conceivable in the United States Senate?
Beth: [00:06:36] The question to me about this whole situation is how much to trust Senator Manchin and how much to give him the benefit of the doubt, because we know it's reported all the time that he is talking a lot, not only to the more moderate in the way that we use the word moderate today, which is ludicrous, but to the, to the [00:07:00] group of Republican senators who voted to impeach Donald Trump the second time, to the group of Republican senators who were willing to establish a January 6th commission, small in number as they may be and a few others. He's talking with those people, he's talking with people like Senator Sinema, Senator Tester, you know, Democrats who are not gung ho about HR1 as it currently exists and there is a piece of me that thinks this guy's been in the Senate a long time. I think he probably has a strategy here other than just saying I'm a hard, no.
And so to me, the question is what comes of this? You know, I, I don't feel equipped to speak to the wisdom of it today because if, if what came of, this is a version of voting rights legislation that actually got passed and advanced the ball, and actually got passed with bipartisan support, I do think that that is preferable to overturning the filibuster and ramming through all of HR1, as it exists right [00:08:00] now,
Sarah: [00:08:01] I agree that Joe Manchin has been there a long time and when I look at this editorial, I can see glimmers of a strategy that makes sense to me. I think that it is smart to say all these things while also saying there is voting rights legislation that I can't get on board with but that voting rights legislation that he can't get on board with, which might even be better legislation I'm willing to have that argument is supported by one Republican. That legislation is not going to get 10 votes either and I'm pretty confident saying that.
I haven't been in the Senate at all much less, as long as Joe Manchin and I don't know who he's talking to, but in a world where Donald Trump still has a death grip on the Republican party, where he is, he is still perpetuating the big lie that the election was stolen, where you have state legislators and state Republican parties, you know, centralizing their power, advancing the big lie, openly passing legislation that suppresses the [00:09:00] vote, do you think that there are 10 Republican senators who would say, they wouldn't support impeaching him after January sixth? You think there's 10 Republican senators.That are going to even vote for the John Lewis voting rights act? I don't think that there are, I really don't. I want to believe it, but I don't think there are.
Beth: [00:09:17] Yeah, I hear you and I'm not trying to be obstinate and I remain in my position from Friday's episode of very, very concerned about all of this. Honestly, the fact that he dropped this op-ed makes me feel a little bit more optimistic that he might know there are 10 votes for the John Lewis voting rights act because I would not put my neck out like this if I were him, if I didn't have something in my pocket, you know, coming on the way here and I just wonder if this was a deal that was struck in some way, you know.
Sarah: [00:09:48] Or he's trying to force their hand. Right.
Beth: [00:09:50] And look, I honestly think as an American citizen, I would like to see some hands forced and I think hands could be forced more [00:10:00] effectively on smaller bills than an 800 page bill. There is always something to run against in a really big bill, like the, For the People Act and if you break those issues apart and say, let's vote up or down on gerrymandering reform, which is not in the John Lewis act, but needs to be done desperately, I wonder if that's a harder vote to take than something that encompasses all of this campaign finance reform, for example, where you can debate it and you can run commercials about how ridiculous it is. I mean, I kind of think there might be greater accountability in splitting this up and forcing people to take it on issue by issue.
Sarah: [00:10:40] I mean, I think there might be greater accountability, but I don't think there are 10 votes, no matter how small you break this up, that's the reality that we're facing and I want to believe that he wrote this editorial because, and put himself out there and put his, his support behind the John Lewis act for a reason but [00:11:00] I just, I don't see the votes. I just don't see it. I don't see 10 Republican senators working to advance any legislation, particularly when it comes to voting, considering the current state of the Republican party.
The current state of the Republican party was on full display as Trump went out and spoke in North Carolina this weekend. You know, I think that he is the current state of the party and it was borderline delusional, like in the, he has, you know, it's this weird state, just like we talked about on Friday where he is both less powerful and more powerful than he's ever been and it's so weird to watch it on full display as he goes back on the road. It's just, I don't even know. I don't know another word for it besides weird. It's [00:12:00] just weird.
Beth: [00:12:01] Well, I have to admit that I did not watch it. I have only read excerpts. I did not read the full text. I just kind of feel like he's not the president anymore. I don't feel as responsible for taking in all of what he has said. From the clips I've seen, I probably could ad lib a version of what he said myself, you know, because it is just the same stuff. It's so predictable. I think he's probably delighted by the Facebook decision, which gives him something to rail about even more and I know I just kind of am trying to accept that there is some percentage of people for him that song and dance still works. I have to believe that there's a larger percentage of people for him it is very tired and very sad. And I almost wonder if him going back out there is going to make it seem even more tired and sad than if he retained a little bit of mystery about himself, but you know, mystery, not his forte.
Sarah: [00:12:52] I think that's what happened with the blog. I think it does. It makes him look a little reduced and sad. That's why it's so weird [00:13:00] because you know, as a person who is not in his base, There is a part of my perception that I always question, right because there is a, a thing that happens with people who support him that I can not replicate inside my own mind and so, yeah, it seems sad to me, but I don't know how it seems to them and it's, it must still have a pull because we are watching Republican leadership in the state parties and the state legislator and the Congress and the United States Senate fall in line. So there is some power there and it seems diminish to me, but I sometimes I doubt myself.
I mean, there's a thing that I do not doubt, which is that he will never miss an opportunity to miss an opportunity and his own clouded judgment, I do believe will ultimately be his undoing. When he was talking about, well, I just don't think that we're a minority and I just think that there are way more people that support you well, yeah, because you only listen to things [00:14:00] you want to hear. So it does not surprise me at all, that this is his perception and that he thinks like the country is just totally behind him because he doesn't listen to any critics so he never hears bad news. Um, so that part of like, I feel trustful of my own judgment when it comes to like that, he is, he is still who he is always been, which is someone that can not see the reality before him clearly.
I think he probably really does believe that he's going to be reinstated in August, this bananas theory that's out there and I think that his inability to see, you know, passing into his own nose has, and will always be his ultimate undoing. It's just, it's the, it's the people that follow him because it's such an amorphous group and there are so many interests at play and, you know, there are people in leadership who I think, think he's a buffoon, but want to use whatever they can to stay in power. Then there are people in leadership who I don't think believe him to be a buffoon. Who believe him, that who are like true believers [00:15:00] in the, in the sense of his base and so it's just hard to, to see how this is going to play out as far as within the party and because we're a two party system, how that affects the rest of us.
Beth: [00:15:12] Yeah, I agree with most of that. And I, I do think that there is an unevenness in the way you have to tackle these issues and how precise you have to be and, and what he can get away with versus what Democrats can get away with and I think the reporting over the weekend about three groups that did sort of a post-mortem on the 2020 elections, looking at democratic strategy showed what an uneven playing field it is. That Democrats just have this sort of deeply embedded branding issue across the country and people hold the democratic party to an entirely different standard than the Republican party.
We see this every time we talk about the legislation in Georgia, Texas, what's going on in Arizona with the [00:16:00] recount, there are a handful of people who focus more on any place they think we might have overstated the effect of those laws then the fact that those laws are aimed to constrict people's opportunities to vote. The underlying substance of that is less important than the fact that we might have overstated any particular aspect of the bill. Right? And that, to me just demonstrates what happens on a national level all the time. That there is this imbalance in critiques of the party, in the standards that the parties are held to and I guess we could complain all day about the unfairness of that.
And I know so many of y'all are so mad at Joe Manchin and are wholly uninterested in hearing me defending him but I do think that it wins some credibility with an amorphous population out there of people who do have that sense as you said, Friday, Sarah, of like, well, both parties are bad and who the data kind of shows tend to hold Democrats to a [00:17:00] harder standard than Republicans. I do think it earned some credibility to say, like, we need to slow down. There are problems in this bill. I want to work through those problems. I want to narrow it down to something that more people can get behind. I do think there's something important in that.
Sarah: [00:17:14] Yeah, no, I definitely think there's some moral purity going on with HR1 and if you don't support every bit of HR1, you don't care about voting rights and that's not helpful. It's not productive and it's not true. So you can think that the attack on voting rights is a five alarm fire and also have problems with HR1 and anyone who tells you otherwise is not being intellectually honest, but, uh, it's just so frustrating for him to be ringing that bell of bipartisanship and the face of these clearly partisan attacks on voting rights.
It just is, it's just hard, really hard to get past that part. Not because I don't doubt the political skill of Joe Manhcin. He is a Democrat in West Virginia. Listen, I don't ever doubt his political skill and I think it is [00:18:00] important to always remember that, you know, one of the very first lessons I ever, ever learned as a Senate staffer, Senator Menendez sits every staffer down and says at the end of the day, I represent the people of New Jersey. It's my name on this legislation. It's my name on the letters. It's my name on the door and so I think that, that, you know, thinking, you know, better when you are not the person in the role is a really delicate line to walk when you're talking about congressmen and senators and governors and mayors, heck so I, you know, I try to really keep that in mind.
I really do, but there's a part of me that thinks, well, was this his political skill? Or was this him be mad because the president called him out a little bit at the Tulsa speech. Is this feeling like the heat's turning up on him and his ego flaring up? Like, I don't know. I don't know Joe Manchin at all. I don't know him that well, none of us do and so it's just, you know, it's hard like to, to, to [00:19:00] look at this and say, is this political skill, or is this your ego reacting? Because you think people aren't, aren't listening to you and you want to maintain the power that you have, which is enormous right now always spent the last week talking about is the two senators from West Virginia because the bipartisanship. Joe Manchin and the filibuster and Shelley Moore Capito who's meeting with the president to try and get bipartisanship on the infrastructure bill. So, I mean, Listen, I love West Virginia. I spent a lot of time there. It's a beautiful state, but it's not exactly populous and so the state, you know, wielding this much power and both senators at the center of every headline is a little bit hard to swallow.
Beth: [00:19:36] Well, that's really where I am just reserving judgment because I don't know what this is. I don't know if this is just his ego reiterating for the millionth time things he's been saying for a while, and there's no other strategy behind it or, or if it is a, a play orchestrated with a group of people that he's working with, that he thinks will advance the ball and if it's the latter, I think that's wonderful. And if [00:20:00] it's the former, I think we have a real problem because I do believe that it's essential for Congress to pass something that reigns in what's happening in states that are clearly trying to stack the deck on their own elections.
Well, we're going to take a really hard turn here from voting rights into parenting during the pandemic and I know that many of you all are not parents. I hope that you still find something worthwhile in this conversation because I feel like it's another step in the chain of trying to really process what we've learned over the last year, what we felt over the last year and where we might be going as we kind of slowly make our way hopefully to a post pandemic world.
So we are welcoming Sarah's longtime friend, Julia Edelstein, the editor in chief of Parents Magazine for this discussion. Well, we're so glad that you're here. You said a bunch of statistics before our conversation today about what's happening with parents and I want to start with the one that jumped out at [00:21:00] me as the most surprising, because having lived this experience, a lot of it, I was like, yup, yup, yup.
Sarah: [00:21:04] Yup. Burnout. Got it.
Beth: [00:21:06] I was surprised to see that parents were statistically more likely than people who are not parents to be worried about their own parents. That really jumped out at me and I felt like it spoke to just the crushing sense of responsibility that the past year, and probably the whole experience of parenting creates but I'm really curious to hear your thoughts about that particular statistic.
Julia Edelstein: [00:21:33] I think it makes sense because when you, just from an age perspective, I know I felt that personally, I was actually living with my father during the pandemic and every day that was my chief concern was am I going to bring coronavirus home and endanger him? Because when you look at the age of parents right now, who were, you know, taking what they felt was a risk by sending their kids to school, but really needed to send their kids to school if they could, but then also really needed the [00:22:00] grandparents to be involved. I mean, that is like part of the ecosystem for parents today. They really cannot get by without some help from grandparents and so there were, we definitely saw that narrative a lot in the media. I think of people who had not seen their grandparents for months and months and months and months.
But I think there were, there was a big community of people who were quietly seeing grandparents, maybe not posting about it on social media, but it was definitely going on and really feeling concerned about their health and safety and then even if you weren't seeing them, um, you know, parents right now, yeah. People who have young kids, their parents are at an age where they were just really vulnerable and so I think the stress on parents was just immense, like worrying about their kids, particularly with their mental health and then worrying about whether the grandparents were gonna survive and um, you know, would you even get to, if, if God forbid they wound up hospitalized, that feeling of being powerless, not being able to visit them, maybe you won't even see them again. I mean, I have friends who that happened to, they lost a parent to COVID and, [00:23:00] and didn't get to say goodbye. Um, you know, tiny, you know, I mean, if you wanna think about like the worst thing of the pandemic I have, I think it has to be the zoom funeral. I mean, if you attended one of those, that is just the height of pandemic. I mean, of just everything that was wrong and suffering, it's just so sad. So yeah, I think, I think it makes sense that stuff.
Sarah: [00:23:22] Parents Magazine is always like trying to address this, this broad age range, this broad experience range, and then you have this pandemic. So how did you think about how to address your audience and this crushing stress and the suffering and a package like a, like a print magazine? Like where, where were you trying to go? Where were you trying to help people? How are you trying to tackle such a huge lift as Parents Magazine?
Julia Edelstein: [00:23:51] It was really, I mean, it sounds crazy to say it was exciting because it was really an overwhelming situation, but [00:24:00] thinking about a parenting brand for us, this was truly one of the most unprecidented, you know, it was truly like creating unprecedented content. So parents were in a moment where there was no guidebook, like there, there was no book on how to parent in a pandemic or,
Sarah: [00:24:15] and there are lots of parenting books. Yes.
Julia Edelstein: [00:24:17] There are a lot of parenting books and I always say like, it's hard, you know, parenting content is evergreen to some extent, yes, there are new theories and methods, but at the end of the day, parenting is as old as humankind and, and so this was really a situation where we were doing reporting from the ground up and we were really trying to create sort of best in class, best practice reporting on everything from, you know, remote learning, to talking to your kids about the pandemic, to hygiene, you know, to your own career, to your own mental health, to your marriage but one of the things that I think as soon as the pandemic started, that just became really crystal clear to me was that the mindset and the values of parents shifted [00:25:00] really quickly.
Like it was like maybe a week or two and we had kind of been as a brand, I don't want to say, like we were, we were an influencer, but we were kind of playing in that space of mom influencers and I felt like it was almost overnight so many of those, a certain type of influencer hit the wrong mark, or seemed a little aloof or a no longer felt relevant. It's not that people don't like to follow influencers. I certainly follow a lot and I find it interesting and entertaining and relatable, but everybody needed to be more authentic. Um, everyone kind of needed to stop faking it. If you were faking it or your house looked too perfect, or you were able to still, you know, consume in a kind of gaudy way, that did not resonate with parents across America, um, anymore.
And w I felt in the magazine, our most important job when the pandemic started was really just to make parents feel seen and understood, and to be kind of an empathetic place for [00:26:00] them because parents were so burned out, so overwhelmed, like they lost every support system. They were so freaked out and we were kind of an invisible like population. It was not, no one's focus was on parents of young kids, you know? Um, in terms of mortality numbers, parents of young children were, you know, not at high risk when we were in the height of the pandemic and so even though it was like probably the most strenuous existence, uh, we were not in the headlines, it was not anyone's top concern, I think and so we really just wanted to be that place where parents felt like the priority, where they felt seen where their needs were met. You know, when basically I think parents across America kind of felt like abandoned, like, okay, you can't.
I mean, I remember when, um, pandemic started my, my building where I live in Manhattan sent an email saying no childcare providers can come into the building anymore.
Beth: [00:26:54] Oh my gosh.
Julia Edelstein: [00:26:56] I mean, this was New York city. It was really a terrifying [00:27:00] time and my building has a lot of elderly people who have home health aids and that was obviously the top priority, like bring in the home health aids, but we can't have extra visitors and if you, unless you can prove that both parents need to work outside the home, like as first responders then you're going to be home with your kids and I have a full-time job. My husband works outside the home, uh, as a physician in a hospital. So he was obviously at high risk and I was like, okay, so now it's just me and my full-time job and my two kids and I can have no help and it seemed like nobody, that was not anyone's concern except for my own, you know what I mean? And I just think across the country, people felt like that, like that you were just supposed to feel like, oh, well, I'm, I'm lucky that I have a job and I'm lucky that I'm healthy. Um, and you kind of, weren't allowed to be panicked about it.
Beth: [00:27:52] I've been surprised in this period by how pejoratively the word babysitter has been used in so many spaces as though that is [00:28:00] a non-essential function, not to default a pandemic language, but you know, when, when schools were closing and there was this kind of, well, you guys just want a babysitter. I thought, well, childcare is really important and I, I was just surprised by the attitude during that initial period.
Julia Edelstein: [00:28:17] Yes. I really, I agree that school does provide childcare. It, you know, that is not why our kids go to school, but certainly everyone is dependent upon school for childcare and when that evaporated, there was a sense that like, oh, you just want to put your kids in school because you want childcare and I don't think there's any shame in saying that to some extent, like I, yeah, I do. Like my wife was set up for my kids to be in school. Like I have a job that supports my family and I agree it was, it was a strange, you know, I don't think, and the childcare centers that felt open that stayed open were heroic and maybe were not really given their due in [00:29:00] terms of providing that, going to work every day. That was at a time when we really didn't know what the risk was, um, in terms of children's spreading the virus and, you know, so many childcare centers closed, but some did stay open and yeah, I don't really feel like that there was some of that and was celebrated.
I also feel like parents were kind of guilted for using childcare, which I eventually did after about four or five months and I actually did get COVID from, um, a childcare provider. Well, no, my kids got it and then I got it from my kids and. I don't know. I felt really, I did feel a little shamed in that moment. You know, nobody was overtly nasty to me, but there were just undertones where I felt like embarrassed that I had to be that mom, that working mom who had a babysitter and I, we fortunately did not, we were really careful. We didn't, you know, we quarantined as soon as we were a contact traced and we did not spread it at all, but yeah, it's, it was, uh, I do [00:30:00] feel like yes, there was, there was a lot of guilt and people have to kind of hide their babysitters over the last year, which I think, yeah, babysitters are absolutely essential.
Sarah: [00:30:23] Assessing risk with children is so fraught it's and I don't think we're particularly good at it. You know, the example I always used is people are consumed by kidnapping, but don't pay attention to car seats, right? Like, whereas a car trip is much more dangerous than the risk that your child will be kidnapped and I think that now we're being asked to do this very complex risk assessment as parents between our financial needs, the job requirements, childcare, mental health, the mental health of our children, the risk to our children and I, I wondered how you guys thought about shepherding people through that or [00:31:00] how you thought about that in your own life? Like how can I do this risk assessment when my emotions are so high?
Julia Edelstein: [00:31:05] Yeah. I mean, I, that sort of speaks to, you know, what I meant in the beginning when I was saying how we wanted parents to feel seen and understood and, and I guess another thing I would say is just for it to really feel like a judgment free zone, because we're in a situation where there just weren't any good decisions. Maybe for some people, there was an easy way to live, who their lives are already set up, where there was a primary caretaker. One parent was that person and the other parent was working from home and yes, it was hard to work from home with kids under foot, but you muddled through and you didn't really have to change the division of responsibility.
But I think for other families, they're just, there were hard choices to make. Um, we're now starting to hear people kind of grappling with that, this feelings of guilt that have come about, you know, if they are seeing a long-term effect from one of those decisions but I think in the magazine, we've tried to make clear, you know, we tried to present the science, we try to present the CDC guidelines, which have not always [00:32:00] been the client, the clearest, or, you know, so we're always trying to keep up with that, but also trying to be you know, trying to make it clear that everybody has to make a decision that's right for them. Something we saw throughout the pandemic that I think is lessening a little bit, was just people making judgements about their friendships, like writing off people for decisions they made in regard to mask wearing or travel.
Like you would see a friend take a plane trip and on social media and then we would see people being like, I can't be friends with that person anymore because I find that ethically abhorrant that they went on that trip or, you know, people being slow to get vaccinated. I think that those are all, or even using a babysitter, like really judging someone harshly for getting childcare or, you know, whatever it is or sending your kids to school or not sending your kids to school, I think it's really important to not end relationships over these issues. You know, this [00:33:00] was like, uh, an, a crazy situation that was thrusted on everyone. Everyone did their best to make decisions. You never know what is going on in someone's life.
Social media tells a sliver of the story and I think in the magazine and my parents, we've just tried to really have people take perspective that this is a temporary situation. One decision somebody made about going on a trip to Florida is not the be all and end all of their morals or who they are, who they are as a person. Um, but I think people were just really you know, isolated really hyped up about these issues and making a lot of snap judgments and so, you know, as we get back to socializing, it is awkward. Like if you have a friend who maybe didn't live the way you did, you know, now you have to think about how big of a deal do you want to make of that. Um, and I'm hoping that everyone can kind of heal and move on.
Beth: [00:33:53] What are you thinking about as the situation evolves, as you were talking about the beginning of the pandemic and how stressed parents [00:34:00] were and just the fatigue of the whole thing? I thought, well, we're using past tense verbs right now, but I still feel so much of this and I wonder what you, you know, hear your readers searching for in this new phase?
Julia Edelstein: [00:34:14] Yeah. Well, I think something alarming that's happening. It's not alarming, but you know, the vaccinations happened faster than anybody anticipated, which is amazing. However, people are not necessarily mentally prepared to be returning to their busy lives so quickly, I don't think anyone expected everything to be reopening in the spring. I think we were all anticipating late summer, early fall. Even at some point we were thinking early 2022 and so parents are having extreme levels of burnout and so many of the stats I sent you to speak to, you know, study after study parents, just over indexing for an anxiety, burnout, stress, depression, and there's not any chance to recover.
Like the, [00:35:00] the gradual return that I think I was anticipating and that we were planning for a little bit at Parents as a brand, kind of didn't happen and it's almost like we all are snapping back to business really quickly without having any chance to process our burnout or get on some kind of hypothetical, gradual, slow train back into reality and so I think that's something parents are anxious about is like. You know, everyone keeps talking about like this anxiety about returning to social interactions and like the awkwardness of small talk. I don't really think that's really what it is. It's a feeling of like, I've just been through a trauma and now you want me to go back to normal life and I haven't had any chance to process it or think about what I actually want my life to look like.
You know, my office is telling me to come back to work five days a week or three days a week or whatever it is and I can't really figure out if that's what I want. It's all just happening a little fast for parents because they really [00:36:00] unlike many Americans are like, there are some Americans who say their lives improved. They slowed down. They had more flexibility. They traveled. They actually were able to do soul searching. Parents did not really get much chance to do any of that like they know that this experience changed them probably permanently, but they have not been able to get that downtime, I think, to like, to plan out a life that makes sense for them or even to just recover.
So at Parents, what we're really trying to do is ease people back into, I don't even want to say normal life, but some sort of busier life while helping them maintain what I think are like a new set of values that the pandemic made clear of what really matters. I think there were some major silver linings to the pandemic for families. One was, you know, people felt a lot less competitive in terms of everything like how they looked, how their house looked, how their kids performed in school, whether they got the lead in the play, whether they were the star forward on the [00:37:00] soccer team, like all of that stuff became very small and we realized how insignificant it was and I don't think people are eager to like go, go back to feeling that way and yet it almost feels like it's going to be forced on us because of how quickly everything is opening and this feeling of like, you don't want to miss out, or you have to sign up for camp. You've got to get back into all the activities.
And so we're trying to just help parents hold onto their values, hold onto like the things they discovered about how they like their lives to be that if they like a slower pace, if they like a smaller circle, how to make some of those hard decisions so that you can have so that you can learn something from this. I think parents are afraid that they just went through a real trauma and that they're going to come out of it with no gains, like without really being in any, you know, that, that working remotely or having their kids home, that life's just going to go back to normal. Maybe if you loved, loved, loved what your normal life was before the pandemic, that's fine but I think a lot of parents felt like they were kind of on a treadmill and couldn't get off [00:38:00] or that their values were all mixed up or they were doing things for the wrong reasons and now they're kind of living their values, you know, living, doing things for the right reasons and wondering how do I keep that up?
Sarah: [00:38:10] Well, I think too, you know, COVID we say this all the time COVID was an accelerant. And so what I saw too, is that it accelerated a lot of awareness and conversations about what's wrong with parenting, particularly in America. It accelerated conversations on the fact that our childcare system is broken, it accelerated and exposed inequities and problems within our school systems and I think one of the big ones for parents is, you know, I see this a lot in our listenership and, and my friend groups and like lots of places where it accelerated or exposed real unequal divisions of labor within the home and so you've had a lot of moms saying, I cannot physically do everything that I was doing before and it's really unfair that I've been asked to do all this and you see like all the [00:39:00] articles about division of labor and what that really, and the emotional load and what's in, what's encapsulated in the emotional load of running a family or worrying about your parents while worrying about your childcare worker while worrying about your kids around COVID and I wonder how you guys are like, seeing those really sort of personal close to home relationship issues inside families post COVID.
Julia Edelstein: [00:39:22] Yeah. I mean, I think when the pandemic started, there was a glimmer of hope that this would be the moment when dads would step up. It was like, now dads are going to be, you know, we're all going to be in it together or something. We did see dads step up a little bit. Some dads did, you know, I was reading that, I don't think it was a survey we sent you. And I'm trying to remember where I read it, but you know that some dads are feeling that same angst that moms are about returning to the office. They liked being home with their kids too. They liked, you know, dads don't always want that, that pressure to go out for drinks with their coworkers or be first into the office. You know, they liked the flexibility too. They like going to the [00:40:00] soccer games and doing school drop-off. It wssn't as it wasn't to the degree that moms did, but it, you know, it was progress.
But we also just saw, yeah, that dads did not step up for the most part. And moms became so overburdened and instead of making dinner and breakfast, they were making breakfast, lunch, dinner, and five snacks and, and also cooking it for themselves and their spouse. So I think that, you know, parents, we have this great brand name that speaks to both moms and dads, but to be honest, the brand for as long as it's existed has spoken more to moms because
Sarah: [00:40:37] Moms are carrying the emotional load to read about child development and think through how their parents,
Julia Edelstein: [00:40:41] yeah. Moms are the ones who subscribed. They're the ones who subscribe to our newsletters, who strive to the magazine. They're the ones who visit the website. They're the ones usually Googling at three in the morning. We're the ones who were sharing the content but I think that something I'm thinking about as like a brand leader is just trying to change the conversation. We, I think a [00:41:00] lot of parenting brands were kind of waiting for dad, like waiting, thinking, okay, norms will change. Dads will eventually get to this table. They'll you know, and now I think we have to just start talking to the dads. We just have to start assuming that that they're they're, you know, we, I, that's probably the number one complaint email I get is from dads who are saying, oh, this, this.
This magazine is too focused on moms and so I think dads may not necessarily be the one seeking out the information, but they do often passively read it or they're handed an article by their wife or they, and we are lucky that we're not like a mom, you know, we don't have mom in our brand name and so that sort of, I think post pandemic 2022, that's kind of at the top of my list is how do we be a leader in making parenting more equitable and have in making this a bigger conversation that's not just like, you know, one or two articles, feature articles a year where we dive into with us and pointed out and even put more onus on moms.
I mean, I think we're constantly [00:42:00] providing moms with solutions, whether it's books or articles or podcasts or systems, but it's very hard to get dads like to, uh, adopt them. Like, I feel like I spy in a lot of Facebook groups, mom, Facebook groups for research and I just constantly see moms being like, I downloaded that app, but I couldn't get my husband to use it. Or I started an Excel spreadsheet. My husband opened it once. So, you know, I think we need a different tactic.
Sarah: [00:42:23] I think one of the most powerful things I've ever read was Jennifer seniors, all joy, no fun and she talks about like the difference between the way traditionally dads and moms approach it and her argument was like, Look, some of this is that we don't need to drag dads to where we are. We need to join them where they are, where they lessen the standards and they say, it doesn't matter if the kid looks rough and it doesn't matter if the house is more messy, like there there's a lot of like their particular approach to parenting, which seems like not an approach is actually an approach and a philosophy that can balance out some of the intensity that comes not from individual choices, [00:43:00] but from societal pressure on moms, you know, the thing with the, even how the kids look well.
Yeah. If they look like they're, you know, messy and dirty and messed up, they're not going to judge you. They're going to judge me right and so I think that's part of it, but I do think I like, I love always, I think a lot about her point of like, well, there is benefit to both approaches and instead of trying to convert one approach there's to see the value in both and like, let that blossom a little.
Julia Edelstein: [00:43:25] That's so interesting because it reminds me of Lisa Demore was talking about the way girls learn and the way boys learn and she was saying there's stuff that girls could learn from the way boys learn, which is similarly similar to the parenting approach you're talking about, which is, you know, not making the a hundred note cards that are color coded and, and less focused on sort of the aesthetics of it or the completest nature of it, but just absorbing and passionately learning about it and maybe it's a messy and maybe there's typos in their paper, but they got done faster so they can do something else. Yeah.
And that, there are some, even though [00:44:00] sometimes as a, you know, I have two boys and I look at just how messy, like some of the stuff they do is, or my first graders just like struggles to keep his folders organized but I also, he, he's not really concerned about his folder being organized, but he is absorbing the information in class in a way I'm not sure I ever did because I was really focused on my pencil cases organizon and my labels and yeah, I think you're right. I was actually just thinking this morning, my husband got my little one dress and he literally, I don't know how this happened, but he put the dirtiest pair of shorts on him, that was like, must've been pulled from the hamper. He had been to the beach, it was like covered in sand and paint and I was like, he can't go to school in the, in these and then, you know, my husband was just like, just let them go in those.
And I have to say something about the pandemic, which speaks to why the pandemic has righted our standards a little bit is that like, I don't really see the other parents in the same way I used to. Nobody goes inside the school. The drop-off [00:45:00] is like instantaneous, and then you're back in your car and so I don't really care what the other moms think in the same way. I mean, I remember for his birthday, I was kind of freaking out like, what should I send in for the birthday snack? And then I realized like the way we do it at the schools, like you have to give it out in the parking lot, but it has to be packaged and I was like, no, one's going to see it. Like I'm not even going to be there. So like, whether it's well received or not, like, I don't know. So I just sent some like cookies from target and that was it.
Sarah: [00:45:26] Moved on with your life, which is what your husband would have done to begin with.
Yeah. So true.
Beth: [00:45:32] Well, I noted one of the surveys that you sent, talked about parents concern about kids' education over the past year. And I think that has been an area where, to your point about redefining values, I've spent a lot of time thinking, what are we doing with school? Why do I send my kids to school? What do I want from school? Who am I supposed to be to support what's going on at school? And I felt this really strange tension with school during [00:46:00] most of virtual learning, even while I so appreciated the way that everyone, you know, moved heaven and earth to try to do something educational for kids throughout this. It always seemed to me that the more rigorous the academic goals, the worse of a match, what was happening online was for what was happening at home and I just wonder kind of what you think happens next. Do we snap back to like a regular school year? Or do you see people having different conversations about what they even expect to happen at school?
Julia Edelstein: [00:46:35] I do think there were people had different experiences of virtual learning, and I feel like a lot of it depended on your kid's learning style, but I agree, like even my, I, I feel very lucky that I had young kids in this pandemic, even though they add a lot of challenges. Um, like for teenagers, I think virtual learning was brutal and those classes can be really hard. I mean, I watched my son's first grade teacher while we were full-time remote try to introduce [00:47:00] the concept of fractions and I felt like the kids, just couple of them got it. She did it as well as one could possibly do it, but I do feel like it was missed and that is probably why a lot of kids fell behind. I think also dual learning virtual and in-person like hybrid was just so much work for the teachers that I, I just doubt that most school districts are going to allow that to be a norm going forward and I do think we're going to end up going back to, you know, predominantly in person.
What I think at least in the public schools but what I do think is going to change is that we're going to see homeschooling become more mainstream. Like I think that before the pandemic that was considered very unusual, something that, you know, somebody who maybe doesn't have mainstream values or exists a little bit on the outskirts of society would do. There were a lot of stereotypes about homeschoolers and then when the pandemic started, everyone was like, Trying to find anything they could find [00:48:00] about homeschooling and interviewing homeschooling moms. So you probably maybe would have never asked her advice before, you know, how do you do it? How do you get your kids to learn? How do you get them to focus?
And I think the people who enjoyed remote learning were actually the people who may be ignored the remote learning curriculum and did more of a homeschool approach, which is, you know, taking what you want from the resources the school gives you, but not being obsessive about the virtual classes and just sort of like enjoy, you know, moms who impair and dads who are able to enjoy the time with their kids who maybe didn't work or worked in or work part time or had flexible schedules. Um, and so I do think like I am, we are seeing parents who are going to miss you know, being at home with their kids and who maybe will opt for homeschooling or they'll go back and feel like the schedule and the business is just too rigorous and they liked the slow mornings at home where they could make eggs and run outside with their kids in the backyard. I mean, I think we're all gonna miss a little piece of that.
And so I think, I think more of what we'll see is alternative school coming up and, [00:49:00] and becoming a little more mainstream, whether it's homeschooling or whether it's a virtual academy that you can sign up for through homeschooling but I, I don't see the public schools embracing virtual that much, maybe a little bit more and I know there's a big kind of outpouring of wanting virtual for kids who are immunocompromised or who just generally miss a lot of school, whether they're facing illness and it would be great if there was an option to remote in, but maybe you need a medical exemption or something to get that.
Sarah: [00:49:32] Yeah cause there were kids, I mean, even teenagers who thrived in remote learning and they were not the majority, but I think that that doesn't matter. I mean, school is supposed to meet every kid where they are and even if they're the minority who really thrived in that remote set up, then, I mean, I think that's something really important to consider and I think that touches on something else I want to ask you about, which is, it's just such a variance with regards to what parenting and a [00:50:00] pandemic meant based on how old your kids were and I think, I wonder how you guys think through how you do such a good job of trying to sweep in all the different age groups, but with the pandemic I mean, from like. The social aspect being so key to teenagers to if you're a baby you're home. Like I had friends who had just had a baby and it was like, this is awesome cause we're supposed to just be in a, we have to be at our houses anyway. So how did you guys think about how to meet parents, where they are along that really, really different age groups and especially parents that have different age groups in the house with them during a pandemic?
Julia Edelstein: [00:50:35] Uh, it was definitely tricky. I mean, we, we mostly specialize in ages zero to 12, so we sort of lasered in on that, which did exempt us a little bit from delving too deep into teenagers that we are I'm hearing start com we go into teenagers more and we did definitely address it a bit because the mental health crisis in kids was really, uh, really fell heavily on teenagers. We saw, you know, [00:51:00] huge wait lists for inpatient psychiatric hospitalization for teenagers. I think that the social element for kids for teenagers was just really really rough. That is just not an age for most kids when you want to be deprived of socialization and stuck at home with your parents.
Although I think, you know, kids who are victims of bullying, kids with the severe social anxiety for those kids, it maybe was better and we did see one interesting thing we discovered in reporting was that we talked to a lot of gastroenterologists for story we were doing on stomach aches. There was a decrease in like stomach aches and, uh, gastro, you know, because kids that are really anxious about going to school and so, I don't know, probably an adults too, I imagine going to the office. So, and that was not necessarily what we expected because we kept hearing about anxiety and all this but I actually think anxiety was heard of down by being at home, but you can't just live at home and never see anyone. That's not really like a sustainable way to live.
So, [00:52:00] so I guess in terms of addressing that zero to 12 age range, we did, you know, for kind of the kids in school, we just tried to provide a lot of resources for managing remote learning, which was something everybody was trying to figure out and really trying to figure out what the best practices were on that like giving that advice to get your kids out of their bedroom, not to use headphones if possible so that you can hear what's going on, you know, setting your kids up like in a quiet place, but where you can sort of be accessible so that they don't become too isolated and alien alienated and also just really again, constantly trying to make the parents feel like they weren't failing, like whatever they did was good enough and just really trying to lower the bar on what you expected your kids to accomplish in remote learning and, and just sort of assuring them that they would catch up at some point.
And now as we come into this 20, you know, we're starting to plan our 2021, 2022 content. And that is like a story we're [00:53:00] doing is, you know, my kid is behind academically. I think that's a, that's a, that was a sacrifice a lot of parents made for the sake of their relationship with their child and I think it was the right choice. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, if you were, had to have a battle with your kid to do their five math problems, or they could just maybe do one math problem and then you could, you know, cuddle up and do something else, you know, choosing the relationship, I think made sense. We're not teachers and we weren't meant to be, um, having those constant battles over it.
So now kids are many kids are behind, some are ahead, but some are behind. Um, and so we're, that's something we're investigating right now, I think is like for those kids, for the ages that it really matters. Do you need to catch up, how do you catch up? What onus is on you as a parent and what is on school? Like all of that I think is really tricky and we're looking into, and then for the younger, the toddlers and the preschoolers, I mean, those are the under age four is really [00:54:00] where the developmental psychologist told us you really don't need to worry. Most kids don't go to preschool until they're four anyway. They don't really need peers at that age, but that was actually some of our most anxious readers who were writing into us, kind of saying, I'm really concerned my baby hasn't been socialized, or my kid is missing out on this experience.
Those kids, many of them did not do well. Virtual learning, like kind of got freaked out by it. Didn't have the attention span and so it really was, again, just kind of trying to be a soothing force to let you know that your kid was going to be okay if it was just you and, you know, especially only children um, those parents were super anxious about their two or three-year-old just really not seeing many other many other kids and the sense we got from experts was that it was actually going to be totally fine. Yeah. But it is interesting that people who had pandemic babies, we kind of view, you know, We talked to a lot of like new moms, like the new moms segment [00:55:00] is a big part of our reader base and I kind of feel like they missed out on a lot of just milestones, like taking their baby out on their first plane ride or going out to the playground and so now it's almost like we're looking at like a, a cohort that's like twice as big where moms are, you know, making their first mom friends, but they might have a one-year-old instead of a newborn. Um, and it's just sorta like everyone's stepping out together whether your baby's three months or 13 months, it's sort of, you know, coming, coming out together.
Sarah: [00:55:30] Well, thank you, Julia so much for coming here and sharing your insights. I mean, you're running like one of the biggest parenting focus groups, basically, really so that's very helpful to hear, you know, your experience and your understanding of like where parents are, because I think you're right. I think it's a part of the population that the pandemic was very, very difficult for and so they need as much care and attention as we can give and thank you [00:56:00] for coming here and helping us do that.
Julia Edelstein: [00:56:01] Yeah, absolutely. My pleasure. Thanks for having me.
Beth: [00:56:14] Thanks again to Julia for spending time with us and for all of her reflections and we look forward to hearing many of yours come in as hopefully this makes some space for all of us to process what we've been living through. Sarah, outside of politics, someone asked us on Instagram for just general tips about navigating marital conflict, uh, in parentheses, politics, life, all of the above.
Sarah: [00:56:36] I mean, I don't know. I don't ever fight with my husband. Y'all I don't know what I could add to this. I feel like we need a little, uh, production inserted, Nicholas laughing hysterically.
Well, I think, you know, my husband and I are celebrating 18 years of marriage next month and I think what I've learned is [00:57:00] that conflict is inevitable, but I like to make it productive. Right? We are two very different people. We see the world differently. I always laughingly joke off to put a picture of these two in Instagram, that there were two books that we brought to the marriage. I brought 14,000 things to be happy about and he brought a pessimists guide to life so that really sums up some of the conflict inside of our marriage is just, you know, he is a six. He likes to catastrophize. I'm a one so once I think it's the right thing to do, but get out my way and so I, you know, what I've, what I've learned is the best thing that can happen is if we can, either after conflict, be able to articulate what just happened.
It's so helpful to me. You know, if we've had a fight in Nicholas will say, I'm sorry, I was just really stressed about work and I took it out on you and I'm sorry. Or if I can say, I'm sorry, I was just had a conflict with the kids and [00:58:00] I felt like, you know, I was alone in it and I took that out on you and being able to just see these patterns inside the conflict so that when they inevitably rise up, we get, we get out of them a little bit faster, recover from them a little bit faster, and we definitely learn more for the next time and to me, that's like, that's the most you can ask for is to just make them a little bit, a little bit productive.
Beth: [00:58:25] That really pairs nicely with what I have learned in our 14 years of marriage, which is to see conflict as a strength, not a weakness to understand that human beings have to be in conflict with one another and if you are suppressing that conflict, you're doing more harm than having the conflict itself. So kind of this tiny bit of my brain tries to celebrate the conflict as it's happening, especially my willingness, you know, as someone who tends to try to prioritize relationships and keep everybody feeling really comfortable and good, my willingness to engage in conflict is something that I've learned to celebrate [00:59:00] over our time together and I think you're right, Sarah, there's so much to be learned.
Looking for patterns in conflict has been really helpful to me recognizing that like nine times out of 10, Chad and I are having the same fight that we've had throughout the entirety of our relationship and once you start to see like, oh, we're doing that thing again, we're playing the tape that is our central conflict then you can like. Chip away at that a little bit with every fight. Like that's the productive piece that I find is seeing, like, what are we adding to this tension that will probably always be a tension for us because we are just different people and we're sort of settled into who we are, but I can understand it differently or more with more complexity or with more appreciation.
I think that it's hard to talk about this without acknowledging that a lot of people are in relationships that are much more imbalanced than you and I are. We both have partners who contribute a lot at home. We [01:00:00] both have partners who we are clear, respect us and respect our intellects and our areas of expertise and that's not the case for everybody. And so I think it's, uh, it's hard to, to offer general advice about navigating marital conflict when you know, you're in a really healthy relationship and that's not true for everybody.
Sarah: [01:00:20] The other pattern as I look back over our marriage is that we both had to grow up. We both had to do a lot of work on ourselves, and there were points in our marriage where I was working harder with the Nicholas or Nicholas was working harder than me and that to me is always really frustrating. That's really hard and there, you have to give a little bit of space, not only for there to be conflict, but for people to be in different points in their like self journey, self-awareness, stress management, exercise. If you're really working hard on yourself and you feel [01:01:00] like your partner is stuck in a cycle of, you know, bad habits and bad coping mechanisms, it makes productive conflict really, really hard or if there's that imbalance in household labor.
Listen, you know, um, The smartest thing I've ever done is married somebody who cooks. Married, a man who cooked, because there's just a certain, certain aspect of gendered labor that happens with kids that we work really hard on but like the fact that I don't have to deal with the food is just like a huge part of like creating that balance just because it's such a massive piece of labor and so I, you know, just giving a little bit of space and Nicholas has always been better at this than I have. I want us to be perfectly aligned all the time. I don't do well. I've, I've had to learn a lot about equanimity, just giving him, giving him space to be his own individual person that I cannot control.
He's always been better at that than I have, but just like giving space for just because you've decided that, you know, [01:02:00] Meditation has, you know, broken you wide open and made you a better person does not mean that your partner is going to come right on board and sometimes you are going to be in the conflict is going to be because one person is stuck in a really unhealthy cycle, you know, and for me, the sort of promise I made, right was to, to work through that and to see it and to, to be present in it and not to let the conflict decide the relationship for me, the promise has defined the relationship, the promise to be together and I can only speak about my own experience. You know, I've been with Nicholas since I was 19 years old, so I can't speak to other relationships and, you know, I think that sometimes the conflict is defined by control or abuse, and that's like a totally and completely different scenario and so, yeah, it's, it's really almost impossible to, to offer advice about conflict. I think all we can ever do is really just speak to what's helped us in our own [01:03:00] journeys.
Beth: [01:03:01] I do know that when I think about even the biggest tensions that I have with Chad, it's, it's always clear to me when I'm able to like take a breath and process that those tensions are coming from differences that are strengths for our relationships. They're strengths for how we manage our house, for how we parent our kids, for how we sort of organize ourselves in the world and I think if I look back on even the, you know, comparatively, you know, very small relationships that I've had in my life. Even like non-romantic relationships but when I think about relationships that have not served me well, and that I've needed to exit, the conflict comes from differences that are not strengths. That there are differences that are so fundamental or so damaging or so hurtful and that they can't be worked through and so maybe that's a way to, to think about your conflict. When I dig into what's really going on here. Does it come from something [01:04:00] that in a non-conflict setting I would see as a real gift?
And that all, I think applies to how we think about politics as well, and why we always encourage, like trying to spend some time figuring out what's going on and whether you're in a situation that's about control and ugliness and hurt, or about something that when the tension exists, it's it leads to pretty healthy outcomes and we hope that we're able to do that with you. Thank you for letting us be part of that thought process twice a week. We'll be back with you here on Friday. We're really excited to have another conversation about COVID. This time we'll be with an epidemiologist, Jessica Malaty Rivera, who I'm sure many of you are following on Instagram so tune in for that on Friday. Until then, have the best week available.
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