Chasing Achievement in American Childhood

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[00:00:00] Sarah: But we live in a consumer culture that says the only way to serve yourself is to say yes. Yes, yes, yes, yes. Yes. Finding a moment to realize that we can say no, that our value comes outside of our ability to achieve is essential and it is hard. And so that trickles down into the way we treat our kids the way we treat each other, the way we parent.

[00:00:33] Sarah: This is Sarah 

[00:00:35] Beth: and Beth. 

[00:00:35] Sarah: You're listening to Pantsuit Politics. 

[00:00:37] Beth: The home of grace-filled political conversations.

[00:01:00] Sarah: Hello, everyone, welcome to another episode of Pantsuit Politics. On today's show, we're going to start out with a news update. Lots happening around the world and on our border that we're going to talk about in the first segment of the show. In our main segment, we're going to talk about two viral articles that I think ask a simple question: Are we failing our kids? We're gonna talk about that. Simple question, simple and easy. Then of course, at the end of the show, we'll talk about what's on our mind outside politics. But before we get started, we got an email from Abby recently, and I can't tell you what it was about because she asked us not to talk about that and that we're going to respect that, but she was sharing a very specific, very impactful way an episode affected her. And what she said in this one sentence, took my breath away. She said, when you operate with grace in the way that you do, the ripples are unknown and unknowable. And when I read that, I just sat there and cried because that's, she just perfectly captured at y'all that's the whole ball game.

So many of you have been naming how hard the past several years have been because of the chaos, the lack of control, being forced to deal with all these things that are so traumatic. But choosing to deal with them with grace is powerful in a way we are always trying to articulate here at Pantsuit Politics and I just think that today, Abby did the best job of articulating that it's unknown and unknowable.

Before we get to our news update, we have a quick correction from our Reagan episode. I said that Reagan was the first president to survive an assassination attempt. And we got a million messages, including one from Gerald Ford's granddaughter, y'all. About fell out my share that that was not the case.

Okay. So at first I thought that I got it wrong because he was the first one physically injured to survive an attempt because there's been lots of attempts. Like Andrew let's people be firing guns that don't. And that's what happened with Gerald Ford, like back to back to, and this was the craziest part to me.

I fell down a, listen, I fell down. I internet hole about this assassination thing. I went on an assassination vacation. The two people who attempted to assassinate Gerald Ford were women. Did you look this up too, Beth? 

[00:03:30] Beth: No, but I am going to have to look it up now. I'm seeing all your notes here and I'm like, okay, I need to know more.

[00:03:35] Sarah: Yeah. One of them was a follower of Charles Manson. She went by the nickname Squeaky. If that doesn't get you on Wikipedia, I don't know what will, but so these two women tried to assassinate Gerald Ford in September of 1975. One's gun. Didn't go off when somebody kind of like hit her hands, I think basically.

And so I thought, okay, well maybe we need a word for like assassination attempt that didn't actually physically injure the person, but Teddy Roosevelt got shot. He only was saved by the very thick bundle of paper. And he was using for a speech that the bullet had to get through first, but it did lodge in his chest and it was there until he died.

So I guess it was Teddy Roosevelt, then Reagan, who like survived attempts that physically injured them. I'm creating a new category here. 

[00:04:24] Beth: There is nothing so perspective-inducing as thinking about past assassinations and assassination attempts. Whenever I feel like we live in the worst of times, everything is the hardest. Everything is on fire. I remember, no, we do not. Things are difficult, but they have always been so. And when people are running around trying to shoot the president, that is a whole new category of outrageous. 

[00:04:49] Sarah: Twice in one month. Running around, trying to shoot the president twice in one month. Okay. So now that we've gotten that correction, that's so many of y'all emailed us out of the way.

We're going to talk about the news. It was a hard weekend for the foreign policy team. And the Biden administration. First up, we had last week news that the United States and Australia have entered into a historic deal for the United States to sell nuclear-powered submarines to Australia. This is a big deal.

This is all about the pivot to China and building allies in that region of the world. We knew China would not be happy about this and they were not. But then we heard over the weekend that France was furious about this deal because their largest defense contractor had a $60 billion agreement to supply attack submarines to Australia and Australia assured the United States that they would deal with France.

It turns out they didn't really deal with France. So France found out about this deal basically through immediately were furious and then recalled their ambassadors from the United States and Australia. 

[00:06:19] Beth: So the deal is called AUUKUS because the UK is involved too. So it's A-U-U-K-U-S. France did not recall their ambassador from the UK. Instead, they just took a real swipe at Boris Johnson and talked about how the UK is basically like the fifth wheel of a car in this deal. And Boris just likes to have opportunities to look important. 

[00:06:40] Sarah: Ooh.

[00:06:43] Beth: So what you have, if you are France or the European Union, which is also really unhappy about this is the United States interfering with the contract that France had with Australia, not consulting with France, not consulting with the EU, but weirdly involving the UK.

And I understand why everybody's big, mad about it. I understand why three English-speaking nations working together on this and leaving out their European allies is problematic. I understand why China's mad. I don't care so much about that. But the other concern here is that the United States equipping Australia with nuclear-powered submarines using highly enriched uranium could set off a chain of events with Iran because when you are talking about nuclear non-polar proliferation, and then you were out in the world saying, well, Hey, like let's put some more nuclear-powered submarines into the waters.

It is unlikely that a country like Iran is not going to notice that. And so there are just so many dimensions to this situation. That have me scratching my head hard. I do not understand what we're doing here. I get that. We have said that this administration has said, we want to shift our focus to the Indo-Pacific because like many administrations before it recognizes the threat of China in the Indo-Pacific and recognizes that we have for too long, spent a lot of resources in Western Asia. So I understand that, but making everybody mad in the wake of, it seems like a bad idea to me. 

[00:08:20] Sarah: I think I was more sympathetic to France before the additional reporting that this was about a defense contract, right. It's easier when it's just like pure diplomacy than when they're $60 billion on the line and you feel like, oh, well, that's what you're actually mad about.

And this agreement from the reporting I did read had been delayed. Australia had concerns about the dated nature of the technology. Now should the United States have depended on Australia? No, they were doing what we all do it when we're in a difficult conflict and the other person says, oh, I'll talk to the person we go, okay.

When we know we should say, I will also talk to the person and deal with it because we have a separate relationship. They, we all I've been there. I've been there. They should have done that. And also one of the best things I read was in the New York Times. And the reporter said that in the end, Mr. Biden's decision was the result of a brutal calculus that nations sometimes make in which one, ally is determined to be more strategically vital than another.

And I think with this China pivot, there is no way to do it without making people mad. We built up the European alignments in the wake of world war II and over ongoing concerns about Russia. But we live in a different world. Now we talk about this all the time, right? That we have to pivot to China and that, and the Biden administration sees China as a threat.

Now I will say this. I think that's. I don't really want to engage in another cold war with China. I don't want to apply all the lessons we learned from the 20th century and act like the 21st century is exactly the same. And I see a little bit of that, like, well, now we just do what we did. We do it with China and we make people mad in the process.

I mean, I understand the motivations, but I think if we're going to pivot to China, well, then let's also take a strategically different approach because China is not Russia and this is not post-World War II, right? Like I hope that's the, in the course of this brutal calculus, this is what they're learning.

And listen, I think the reality is that for better or for worse, Donald Trump opened up some room inside of a lot of diplomatic relationships. And what I mean is when you get up an antenatal gathering and say, NATO sex need to send us more money. I mean, you leave a lot of room for other presidents to do things that would have beforehand seemed unthinkable that now seem less dangerous and damaging.

Do you know what I mean? Like he just pushed the behavior so far that he made it possible for the presidents that come after him to do more than they would have been able to do otherwise. 

[00:11:02] Beth: Accepting everything that you're saying. This to me again, is a moment where I wish the administration were being more honest about what they're doing. If they're making that brutal calculus and let's even say, that's the right calculus, let's say history, judges this as like the sharpest strategic moment and exactly what they should have done. And it, in fact, 

[00:11:23] Sarah: definitely not convinced of.

[00:11:24] Beth: I am definitely not convinced of that either, but let's just like, let's go best case scenario here again. This precedent ran in part assuring everyone that we don't act like this anymore. And this president specifically assured Europe that we don't act like this anymore. And it's not just the defense contract, although I agree with you that I'm sure that that is a huge motivating force, especially when Macron is fighting for his political life, but it is also Afghanistan.

And it is also the fact that we promised we were going to start negotiations with Iran again. And that has just been kind of sitting dormant. I understand why it's an awfully full inbox that they have at the white house, but that's just been sitting dormant and. Given the go-ahead to the Russian pipeline that we were going to oppose by because we were standing with Ukraine.

It's one thing after another, where if I'm sitting in Europe, I'm thinking, I don't really see a whole lot of difference between where we've been and where we are now. And I think that's really bad when this administration said from the beginning and still says every day. No, because we're all about multilateralism.

That's what we do. We work with our European allies on everything. 

[00:12:40] Sarah: Well, I think they're just redefining multilateralism I think they're saying multilateralism has to mean more than just Europe, and look, you know, in so many ways it's true because he's just not Donald Trump. He's not going to stand up and mouth off at a, a gathering.

He has qualified, capable people, whether you disagree with their decision-making, they're not in positions of power. And so in many ways, just by being who he is and having the people around him, that he does that it's still true. Right. But I think. He did not fully comprehend how much Donald Trump changed the scene and how much like saying, well, America is back again.

It is based on that data understanding of global diplomacy, even if he was just like, sort of basing that under Obama, you know, a pandemic changes go global diplomacy ending Afghanistan changes global diplomacy. Like I just, you know, this is probably true of all campaign promises, but the second to promise something it's dated because the world is constantly changing.

Things are constantly getting more complicated. And so, you know, it would be hard ever, I think, to speak about your approach to foreign policy as a candidate, and then have that be consistent throughout your time in the oval office. I think his mistake was making that such a center point of his campaign promise that this was going to be so, so dark.

And then America was going to be back and that he had all this experience with allies. And look, I'm not in their closed-door meeting. I don't know what's going to happen. The next time Joe Biden and Emmanuel Macron get together. Lincoln would probably be tense, but we'll just have to see. 

[00:14:21] Beth: Well, and he's walking into the United Nations General Assembly in New York this week. So that tension is going to be right in his face. I think, just to say it a little bit more plainly, I am starting to question the competence of this team because of what happened in Afghanistan and specifically because of our failure to fully consult our European partners and plan well with them about leaving Afghanistan.

And now this, which seems to me, if you can fold in Boris and the UK in this situation with Australia, I think you should be able to consult at least with Brussels and with Paris. And then when you layer on to that, The report coming out about this Acree jus mistake in Afghanistan, where we killed this family of innocent people with a drone and said for a few days that it was ISIS K. And we know that because the New York times it's chipping away at my confidence in the, in the competence and the professionalism of this team. And I hate saying that, but I, I'm not going to be dishonest about it.

[00:15:29] Sarah: Yeah. Well, and I think it's probably a matter of time before somebody at the top pays for these mistakes and resigns. I think that that's probably coming sooner rather than later because that's not even the end of the inbox that we were talking about. We also have a crisis at the border and dear the Del Rio bridge, there is a camp anywhere from 12,000 to 14,000 migrants, primarily from Haiti. I'm sure you've seen the images all over social media.

This is a crisis situation. Now some of these migrants from Haiti have been in Central America and South America, since the earthquake in 2010, you know, critics of the Biden administration say that this particular crisis was created when he said post the assassination and the earthquake that happened in Haiti recently that he would not expel refugees without a visa from the United States because of this crisis.

And so then the people in central and south America thought, okay, well, I'm going to get in there. So I fall under that rule. So the Biden administration is trying to act quickly. I mean, you have border patrol doing the best they can, but I heard repeatedly like we have never seen anything like this before.

This is brand new. And so they're trying to take a very intense and very rapid response to this crisis. And so they are moving the migrants on a plane back to Haiti. They started yesterday, which is Sunday as we're recorded on Monday. And so they're moving several hundred on these planes a day. They hope to get to several thousand by the week's end, they're using title 42, which was a Trump-era executive order relating to the pandemic, which allows immediate expulsion of migrants without giving them an opportunity to seek asylum immigrant advocates hate this order.

They say that it is illegal, but it is an effect. And the Vita ministration does not remove this order. And they are putting these people on planes back to Haiti, as fast as they can. And I think that that is, I mean, it's heartbreaking. They took this journey because there is nothing for them in Haiti.

Haiti is in crisis. There is no security. They're dealing with political crises, natural disasters, a crumbling of infrastructure. What little infrastructure was in place before? And it's just, so this is taking what was already an impossible situation and making it worse.

[00:17:54] Beth: Cause like you said, a lot of these people were not in Haiti. There's a person who keeps getting quoted in various media pieces who spent like four or five years in Chile before coming here. So you've been four or five years in a country. You make this incredibly dangerous journey to the United States only to be put on a plane, to go back to the country that you escaped from four or five years ago.

So brutal. It is brutal. What do you think about this, Sarah? 

[00:18:23] Sarah: I mean, it's impossible. It's impossible. The Biden Administration is in the middle of resettling what? Almost a hundred thousand Afghan refugees. This is on top of a border crisis that was affecting asylum seekers from Central America and a pandemic.

And now you have this crisis with Haitian refugees. And I think the most important thing to me is that everyone understand this is only going to get worse. There are only going to be more countries in a crisis like Haiti and the idea that there is a quick solution or that there is a way to deal with this quickly.

It's just ludicrous. I mean, I hate that. I understand why the Senate parliamentarian said that the immigration measures and the budget reconciliation couldn't stand, but we need to address this legislatively. Our immigration system is broken and we're just going to have. More refugees, more asylum seekers due to climate change due to the stabilization that climate change brings to nation-states around the world.

And if we, if we just zero in and this very narrow way on this one particular crisis, and if we, and we sort of criticize the, this particular approach while ignoring the fact that this crisis is existing inside of a broken system, as if even if, you know, the Biden, ministration found some magic solution that both pleased people who do not want more immigration to the United States and pleased immigration advocates by not sending people back to a desperate situation, let's just this crisis. There will be another one. And I think that's, what's so frustrating about it. 

[00:20:36] Beth: I completely agree with that. My mind with all of this is torn because on the one hand, I'm seriously disappointed with what's going on with the foreign policy coming out of this administration. Seriously, disappointed. I also have a tremendous amount of grace and sympathy for how much they're trying to deal with domestically and abroad.

How I think that there are genuinely caring people working very hard in this administration. And I can't imagine what it feels like to get news. Like we fired a drone on the wrong people. I can't imagine how awful, how awful that is, and what your morale must be like when you're trying to deal with so much at one time.

And then you see things like that happen awful. And all of this takes me almost back to our Reagan episode on Friday, the praise of Reagan as this figure who strengthened the presidency. Set off a couple of decades that we're still living of. The president has to be the answer to every problem. You need a functional, a highly functional United States Congress filled with people who can sit in committee hearings and listen to testimony and read detailed expert reports about what's going on around the world and at the border in order to be able to make decisions under this kind of pressure. And we have a Congress right now that is so busy fighting with each other, even within the Democratic caucus and Republicans who seem to live on a different planet.

We cannot get that kind of whole of government response to anything. And it is having tragic results. Even if every piece of the foreign policy team under president Biden was firing on all cylinders. This is all a lot. And what I read this morning about what's happening in Congress side by side, with these challenges that the administration is trying to navigate.

It's a joke. And I don't know how you start to fix that in Congress, but somebody needs to, because it is a joke. 

[00:22:50] Sarah: Well, I do want to say that the frustrating parts for me is the whole of government response is happening probably among the bureaucracy. There are people in the state department, there are people in the department of defense.

There are people in the department of Homeland security. Who are doing their jobs day in, day out and doing everything within their power to address this and are moving mountains in the face of these cascading crises, but they need leadership. They need authority, they need money.

They probably need more staff I'm guessing. And so that's, what's frustrating to me is like we have a massive federal government who is probably doing more than we could even contemplate to deal with all of this. And so the fact that the people at the top who will most certainly accept any praise are not exhibiting real leadership and making hard choices and taking the political heat to allow our federal government to function competently and comprehensively in the face of all these crises is what's so frustrating. 

[00:23:56] Beth: Because it's totally unfair to those people to ask them to make choices like what do we do with a city of people who have just constructed this area under a bridge. That is a political decision that is not an enforce the existing law, figure it out with whatever resources you have kind of choice.

If you can't, if you can't see the photographs of people under that bridge and have a real moment of, I don't know what to do here, then something has gotten unplugged because I don't know what to do here. It is very, very difficult, and it's not fair to ask the bureaucracy to make that decision. That is a decision that ought to have political input and political accountability.

[00:24:46] Sarah: Well, grace and sympathy for everything we're having to deal with. It seems like an excellent way to pivot to our next conversation in our main segment. Look, I said in the opening that the questions are, are we failing our kids? And the answer is no. Let me answer that before we start this conversation. No, we're all trying the best we can to do what's best for our kids, but we're going to talk about whether the systems we've set up to help us are really serving our kids or serving us.

Earlier this month, the wall street journal published a piece entitled A Generation of American Men Give Up on College, which highlighted some really, really alarming statistics. We all know, listen, we all know that there are more women in college than men. But the article put some numbers behind that trend, us colleges and universities had 1.5 million fewer students compared with five years ago and men accounted for 71% of that decline.

And if this particular trend continues, there will be two women who earn a college degree for every man. And I'll tell you, Beth, after I read this article, I reached out to like all my favorite college professors, my friends who work in community college, a friend of mine who helps high schoolers apply for college and do a person.

They all said, oh yeah, not surprised, not surprised the people who've been working in college admissions and in colleges have been seeing this and been seeing this and been seeing this. And we're not, we're not surprised by this article. 

[00:26:32] Beth: This article was followed by a piece from Derek Thompson at the Atlantic who tries to answer the why of this. And I think there's not one answer to the why with both of these pieces, I found myself wanting to pull back and ask a bigger question, because with so much love to everyone who works in higher education, we've also talked a lot here about higher education, not working in a lot of ways for the modern age.

I kept thinking, reading all of this about a piece I read about law firms several years ago, law firms are always asking the question, why can't we retain women in this piece said, listen, the question is not, why are women leaving so much? It's why are men staying men stay in law firms, irrationally high rates.

And so while I think there is some concern. In the fact that fewer men are applying for college, I also think is the result of this going to be that you have all these women coming out of college, saddled with debt, still looking at an economy that doesn't reward a college degree, the way it used to is this just a moment where we can't see ourselves in a transitional period in history.

And so we're sort of fighting the problem as we're able to define it today in front of us. But, but maybe there is some, maybe there's something rational in the decisions that some of these men are making not to go to college. I don't know. I'm having trouble defining the question in a way that feels right to me.

[00:28:03] Sarah: Well, look, gender coverage is always problematic. I mean, the reason we got this article is because the listener sent it to us and was infuriated by this particular college's approach that they called mothers and sons communication because it's the mothers shepherding the sons through the admissions process because girls are more internally motivated to apply and keep on top of the process and all that.

And I thought, you know, listen, I have three sons, obviously that got my attention, but as I read it, I wasn't angry in that I wasn't surprised that there's some real problematic approaches to dealing with this problem, particularly in the college admissions process. Like, do I think there should be more support for men when they come to college? Maybe? Do I think that right out of high school is the best time for most men to go to college? Maybe not. You know, and so I think that that's like picking it up at the college level, when this problem is manifesting and say, what do we do there? I mean, I think that was Derek Thompson's best point. He says, it's a mistake to exclusively see the female-male gender gap as a college problem.

And he quotes Thomas Mortenson, who says, if we wait until college to intervene, it's too late. To me, this is just a manifestation of lots of problems. I mean, you know, it's an economic problem. A lot of men have that particular agency that they can provide more for their families earning $20 an hour, than going to college and taking on all this debt.

You know, it's a, it's a family problem because a lot of times people have to depend on these children because they're single-parent families and they need an additional income. You know, the criminal justice system. This touches on so many aspects of race, gender, the economy. And again, whether this idea that we march lockstep through 13 years of primary education. And then everybody is ready at either like 17 and a half or 19, or however old you are to go directly into college and become an adult. Never come home again. You know, you and I talked about this a lot during our weekend in Texas. Like I just, I have accepted the fact and continually try to acclimate myself to the idea that my children are not going to leave as freshmen in college, upon high school graduation and become adults and never need me to depend on me or even move home ever again.

I just don't think that's realistic in 2021. 

[00:30:35] Beth: Yeah. I was talking with Chad last night, about how, when there was this shift into the industrial era, people probably weren't sitting around saying, oh, well, we're in the middle of a massive transition in terms of what work looks like. And we are saying that more than they probably were then, but that is because that massive transition involves the information age and all of these digital tools. And I was reading the Wall Street Journal piece, especially the kind of anecdotes from, from young men saying that they just don't know what they want to do. And I thought, I don't either, like, that's fair. Every time I read a piece about how hard it is to hire right now. And, and I listened to people apining on why it is that everybody is short-staffed.

I truly think part of it is that people are making rational decisions about what the future of work looks like and not wanting to get into jobs where they know that someone is actively working on replacing them with a piece of technology. And so there's just a big part of me that thinks we could read these articles and put an enormous amount of pressure on ourselves to like hack this problem. And I do think that unfortunately, a lot of people are just having to ride this wave of transition from one kind of economy to the other, and we're in the messy middle of that. And it's hard. 

[00:32:07] Sarah: Well, there's two things I want to add. You know, when I read this article originally, I thought, well, the flip side of this is the way this hyper competence that they point to from girls.

Isn't always a net positive. In my personal opinion, you know, another, other listeners sent us an article that talks about like, there might be a shortage of competence in the admissions and college process with men. But there's a shortage of confidence with women when they get into the professional space, right?

Like you don't see women succeeding at a two-to-one rate in the corporate world. Like that's clearly not the problem we have. And I think this system that we have in education that rewards girls for hyper competence and perfect grades. Isn't always something to be praised. I think that this idea that girls find inside the education system, that their value is in grades, that their value is in good behavior, that their value is in perfection is incredibly damaging.

I don't want to lose sight of that because it can come sometimes when we have this conversation about there's so many girls in college and girls succeed inside the education system that we just, we just assume that that's good for the girls. And as a girl who went through that system and who had to unpack and abandoned some of those ideas about my value as a good girl, I don't think we should unquestionably assume that. 

[00:33:41] Beth: Because the line between competent and compliant is very, very thin and something that I think is a point well-made in the Derek Thompson piece is that we have boys who struggle academically and tend to get overdiagnosed with issues because they're not compliant.

And I feel like as an adult woman, I had to learn my way out of compliance as a dominant skill in order to move on and be more successful once I was out of the academic setting. So I totally agree with you. And look, I just want to acknowledge, we are all very tender about these topics. Any time you talk about anything, touching on parenting family, gender roles.

It is hurtful to somebody we're having this conversation about girls and boys that leaves behind people who are non-binary or gender non-conforming or transgender. We're going to have this conversation about how we raise our kids. And every time you put into the universe, any inkling of struggle as a parent on the internet, what comes back is hurt, hurt from people who desperately want children and can't have them for one reason or another hurt from people who have lost a child in love, then hurt from people who are out of that particular phase and are wistful about it and miss it and heard from people who are in it, but who are dealing with it differently from you and people who are not parents who are either truly annoyed that parenting gets all this oxygen for reasons that I also understand, or who think no one focuses in on the unique challenges of not having children as they should.

And all that is legitimate. Every bit of it is legitimate and it makes having a discussion like this fraught from the outset and the truth is we're all still trying to like dig in to figure out how this should work and how it does work today. And that's what I really appreciate about Anne Helen Petersen's, right? Next, we're going to talk about her piece against kids sports, and that is an inflammatory title. And also, I feel like if you look at the entire body of Anne Helen Petersen's writing part of what makes it so valuable to me is that she is willing to add. Without any preciousness about things as they are today, she is willing to ask what makes a good life and what forces tell us what makes a good life and what forces constrain us from actually living one.

And I think that's important and worth the pain and tenderness around conversations like this. But I do want to acknowledge it. 

[00:36:19] Sarah: Here's the crux of it for me, everything you said, every person you listed, every experience you called out my, my, my pitch for why this matters and why, even though this conversation is fraught, but we should have it just the same is this particular line from her where she says it would require, in other words realizing that the best way to make things easier for ourselves would be to make things easier for everyone. And that's, to me what this is about. Facing the way our experience doesn't fit. Facing the way this conversation is hard facing the way that it falls short.

All of this is in an effort to say, what can we do instead of trying to, like you said, hack our way to our own individual success or protect our own sort of individual value or to defend our own individual choices. What can we do to turn from that mindset into a way that says this might not fit me exactly, but are there things that we can get at that will make it better for everyone in the main?

And you know, it does have an incendiary title, but I mean, I think the, the best part of the piece where she spends a lot of time, she spends a lot of time on sports, the way around it. She spends a lot of time and particularly on professional leagues and travel leagues, the money that it takes, the time that it takes the status, it gives.

And she uses that particular piece of this universe to point out though, that this happens in lots of activities that this professionalization, whether it's sports, whether it's music, whether it's Lego engineering, you name it, it's this idea. And I'm going to have to read this part because I think it's so, so good.

We have lost sight of the idea that play is how we become people and replaced it with the anxious, understanding that play is how we become careers. And to me, that's, what's in the college admissions piece. That's what we're talking about over and over again. And you see it in adult activities. It's not just kids activities, but the reason it's important to talk about parenting is because that is a manifestation of our values. And our insecurities and our fears and anxieties. And so you see it, you see it in adult activities, too. My husband was talking about, you know, the world of hiking and outdoor camping, that it's not good enough to just go walk outside that you have to have the gear, you have to have the right shoes and you have to right. Have the right food and you have to have the right backpack and you have to have the right tint and you have to have all this gear, like it's this, you have to do it the best way. And you have to do the whole outdoor trail, right? Like it's just this push that it's not good enough to just be, we have to achieve, right?

That's where we bring value. It's only when we're becoming better, more professional, making more money and you just see it in all these areas of our culture. And I think that's what all of this is trying to get at. And that's why I was so anxious to talk about it with you. I think it's why it hits so hard with all our listeners is because we talk about this a lot here.

And I think these pieces just really like reached in and pulled out the heart of the matter. 

[00:39:46] Beth: Well, and Sarah, everything you said about adult hobbies was on my mind when I was reading this too. Anne Helen's written about that before, like that we don't have hobbies. We have things that are a part of our personal brand or building toward our career in some way, whatever side hustles, side hustles.

But here's the other thing we're even in a situation where opting out of all of that gets professionalized. If you decide you're not going to buy all the new stuff, then you can professionalize your opting out. You can professionalize the way in which you've gotten off the consumer track and you actually buy everything through thrift stores.

And you actually only do these types of meats. I mean, even when you say here in 2021, I'm not going to be a part of that. There's a path for you to unite with all your people who are also not a part of that. And now you're a part of something new that has its own hierarchy and coding and status, and that's okay.

I just think it's really important for us to all be able to step back and see it for what it is and ask some questions about it. And I think what is really compelling about these two pieces together. Is that it is a reminder that parenting has become a career too. So you're living a dual track of trying to succeed and hack it and get an A-plus and do it the best with the extra layer of pressure that other human beings are involved now, too.

And I'm not mad at anybody about that because we're all just doing the best we can in that system. But as I read this, I thought to myself, of course, I treat being a mom like a career. And of course, I evaluate the schedule that I shared on Instagram and think to myself, well, I chose all this. I could choose it.

And then there are all the tentacles of. But music was great for me as a kid. And I want my kids to be involved in music. I can name for you all the ways that music was great for me. Why would I deprive them of that opportunity? Just because I don't want to do it, that's lazy, you know, or I can look at it and say, we really need to have family dinner tonight, but Jane's going to be sad if she misses this, she loves doing this.

And there are just, it's the same kind of decision-making that you do in any organization that has too many opportunities, but that's what parenting has become a professional moment of looking at too many opportunities and trying to sort through the opportunity cost of each of those things and the economies of scale, those things.

And I'm doing that in like the easiest situation imaginable because we don't have a blended family. We don't have a ton of kids. We have a lot of economic resources and community resources. I don't know how you manage a lot of this without those advantages. 

[00:42:34] Sarah: Well, and that's, to me, what I just want to scream from the mountaintops.

Is, we are all doing the best we can to manage this, but we shouldn't be having to manage this all by ourselves. I'm not mad at anybody. I'm not mad at the, you know, soccer mom who travels and spends all her time. I'm not mad at anybody. I want to wrap us all at a hug and say, is this working everybody?

Does everybody like this? And look, the, the reality is the pandemic gave us that moment. And that's why we're having these hard conversations because the pandemic gave us a moment to say, wait, do I like this? Is this serving me? But we live in a consumer culture that says the only way to serve yourself as to say yes.

Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. And I think that, you know, finding a moment to realize that we can say no, that our value comes outside of our ability to achieve. That our value comes outside of our ability to parents successfully under the definitions of our society is essential and it is hard and for better or for worse, we don't have a lot of institutions telling us that we are valuable outside of our participation in achievement and success.

And so that trickles down into the way we treat our kids the way we treat each other, the way we parent. And I just, I, I am so thankful for pieces like this. I'm so thankful to have conversations with you where we say time out, we're worth more than this. 

[00:44:24] Beth: I'm not convinced that there, there is a solution either other than just continuing to say a timeout and, and figure out kind of what we want to do next, because the reason there's not a lot of institutional support.

Institutions rely on all that labor too. I'm pretty good at boundaries. And I'm pretty good at saying no. And my kids are too, actually, you know, we've talked about, do you want to do this class or that one? And Jane will say, I think I'm pretty full. I got enough right now. So I don't think our problem is, is so much that we don't know how to say no ever, but some of what eats into our schedule in a bad way, I'm living that this week tremendously our places where we're trying to contribute to the good of the community.

It's non-profit involvement, it's church involvement. It's, it's doing things that are good for us. And I believe making a positive difference where we live. And those are the kinds of institutions that are supposed to help you step back and say, timeout, what am I doing here? What's important. But those institutions cannot thrive without your labor as well.

And so. I'm not sure that we could solve any of this through a lot of policy. You know, some of what aunt Helen is arguing and, and I don't disagree with her is that so much of this is about maintaining your status and that we feel so precarious around our economic and social status in the country because we have a lack of social support.

And I think that's all true. I also think it's true that we would continue to have these problems, even if we had universal basic income, universal childcare. I think that there is always going to be an element of the demands on my time exceed the supply. There are a lot of ways to live a good life.

The culture always contains some kind of pressure-filled particular definition of what a good life looks like. And as humans, we are always going to have some kind of ambition or drive toward achievement and all those things are, are really. Challenging. And I haven't figured out in my own family yet.

And I think we're figuring this out together. You know, how we sit down and talk about that and what choices that demands of us at a particular moment in time. And I don't know how you have that conversation in broader community in part, because I think everybody feels some bit of this and like doesn't even have time to sit down and think about it.

Cause we're, we're rushing around. I mean, when you get into this time of year, just planning a dinner with friends is hard. 

[00:47:00] Sarah: Several years ago when I was going through a really tough time, because I had lost a pregnancy, I had a friend sit down with me and say, what are your roles? And I said, well, I'm a mother and I'm a wife and I'm a social media consultant.

And he was said to me, well, who would you be if you were on a desert island? And none of those roles still existed. And he was like, that's your worth as a human being, just because you're you. And he was like, there can be some event diagram where your worth and your roles overlap, but when they're just a circle on top of each other, that's really dangerous of all.

I think about that lesson all the time, I think is one of the most valuable things anyone's ever said to me. And I think that that's what we're struggling with so much is that we put our worth in our roles. And I do think that there are a lot of policies that could help that, you know, I was listening to as Klein, have a conversation about the economy and how GDP doesn't measure this inherent strive towards happiness.

And I think that's, that's, what's so incredibly difficult about this is happiness is found in purpose in striving for something. But I think our culture, our policy, our governance. Is pushing us to overlap those circles and we need to untangle some of that. And we need to reign in some of that. And I think universal basic income that says, even if it just puts a dollar amount, every person gets this much money.

It's not about your side hustle. It's not about your economic value. This is just, this is the, the amount of money you get. I think that would help. I think, supporting family, supporting labor that doesn't, that's not seen as economically valuable right now, even though it is incredibly valuable like caregiving would go a long way.

But I do think there, there is a cultural, a spiritual psychological component of unraveling, what we've all been taught and what for better or for worse. I do think we are teaching our children, which is that your worth comes from your achieve. And I don't want to teach my kids that I want them to find purpose.

I want them to feel valued and loved because of their presence here in our family and in our community and on this planet. But I don't want to teach them that their worth comes from their achievement. And that's, that's hard. And I can't do that by myself. I can't figure out how to put that lesson in the very marrow of their bones that has to that's cultural.

That has to be so much bigger. And I think that's why this conversation is so hard because we all love our kids and we all strive every day and we put an enormous amount of effort into raising them. And we all know that that's an incredibly vulnerable act because it's not just up to us that they exist inside environments and society and cultures that are teaching them things that we could spend our whole lives trying to unravel and would still be behind the eight ball, you know, and I think that's, what's so difficult, especially when we talk about parenting is that parenting is so much bigger than our individual choices as parents. 

[00:50:33] Beth: And I think as we pursue these policies, we need to be honest about the effect of those policies and how those policies are going to change.

What's available to us. One of the things that I think we need to be Frank about is that we had these COVID relief bills that offered people an opportunity not to do certain types of labor. And they said, I don't want to do that type of labor. And that changes what's available in the world. And I support that.

And also I find it frustrating and difficult some days, you know, and I think as we look down the road and think about things like universal basic income or universal pre-K, that will change the landscape dramatically. And I think we need to change the landscape dramatically. And I also think any dramatic change feels pretty terrible for at least part of it for at least some people and probably for a lot of us.

And so I think you can read this piece about kids sports and go immediately to like all the benefit of kids' sports. And I don't disagree with any of that. I think there is so much value even in achievement. I do think achievement has value. I don't think it's the entirety of your value, but I think it has value.

I think competition is good for us in some scenarios. I think teamwork is really important. I think learning that you're not the only person who matters here today is a very big deal. I don't think you need to read this piece and start to feel defensive of every decision that you've made. At any point in your life about what you and your family participate in?

I think it's more being able to step back. You know, we were having a conversation with our team about this, and Maggie said, I've learned that when my kids say they want to take dance to ask, do you want to go to a class or do you want to have a dance party in the living room? And usually the answer is a dance party in the living room.

And to be able to like lean into that kind of question, what are we really talking about here? What's really the goal. What are we trying to do? How's everybody feeling about it and checking in regularly. Did you want, do you want to do violin again this year? You know, what are you getting out of this and what's stressful about it and how can we make it less stressful?

I think asking questions about what's going on at school is good. And do we have a long enough school day? Should some of these activities, would they be more equitable? Would they focus on some of those really great life lessons more if instead of coming home at three o'clock three to four becomes activity time where you get to try a bunch of different things and maybe you practice for 30 minutes and have a 30 minute game, and it's all wrapped up.

You know, there are, there are lots of creative ways that we can capitalize on the many, many benefits of these activities without continuing to perpetuate a system that does teach our kids to act like many VPs before they've gotten out of elementary school. 

[00:53:25] Sarah: I guess just what I want to emphasize is particularly when it comes to parenting, but when it comes to lots of things in American life, I don't ever want to feel afraid of asking, is this working because we're all working so hard at it.

And I think that's the temptation. It's tough out there. It's hard out there. We all feel so vulnerable and tender and raw. But I don't want to let that keep us from asking those questions of our kids and of ourselves and of each other.

Okay. I have a question for you, Beth. What's on your mind outside politics. 

[00:54:17] Beth: I can't stop thinking about this movie that we saw together while we were in Austin. We went to see The Eyes of Tammy Faye. And let me tell you that I don't know that my eyebrows have fully relocated to their normal position since we saw it, they were lifted the whole time.

My jaw was dropped, not a slow moment in this movie. I mean, every sentence. I had a reaction to. And so I just wanted to like spend a minute first saying, give Jessica Chastain all the awards, give the makeup team on that movie, all the awards and also, oh my goodness. Talk about the professionalization of something that is not supposed to be professionalized.

That is the story of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker. 

[00:54:57] Sarah: Well, did you watch the documentary that the movie's based on? As a tip? Okay. I watched and it brought a whole new perspective to me. It's just, you know, first of all, like they left out like huge sections. Like, did you know that they started the Trinity broadcasting network? After they left. I didn't know. Jim Bakker started the 700 Club, learn that in the movie. Then the documentary, they had this other layer that they in between when they started PTL, they went and started another broadcasting network and got pushed out by the people there too who still own it. And it's still wildly successful.

Just a side note for those of you don't know. Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker were highly, highly successful televangelists during the eighties and nineties. Then there were accusations of fraud and adultery, and there was a whole run of events after that, like in the documentary, they talk about this guy wrote a whole book about how he thinks his trial was a total miscarriage of justice. And how, if it hadn't been basically just like moralizing, how people didn't like him and then like how he made money, he would have gone to jail. Then her husband RO who they don't even address. The second husband in the movie also went to prison for tax fraud later. And then, I mean, it just, it goes on and on and on and on what a life I found myself loving and rooting for Tammy Faye so hard. I think she's another female figure from the nineties that we look back on and think, why were we so wretched to this woman? Not that she was perfect not that she didn't make any mistakes. Her charisma and her enthusiasm and her clear love of people. I mean, this woman had a gay minister struggling with aids on her televangelist show in the eighties.

It's mind-blowing to me. And I think why, like it's such a fascinating cultural study and a personality study. And yeah, I love the movie. I love Jessica Chastain as Tammy Faye. And I highly recommend watching the movie and the documentary. 

[00:56:50] Beth: It's easy to get really cynical about the actual faith of people in a scheme like this. And I found myself just really struggling with that question, watching this portrayal of Tammy Faye, because when your marriage consists of conversations, that sound like, well, God told me this. Oh, really? Will God told me that that's, that's a lot, that's a lot to take in. And I just realized, like, I can't know what was in these people's hearts ever. I think they definitely were convinced of their own sincerity, but it was a fascinating ride. 

[00:57:31] Sarah: Yeah. Well, and there's like a real, real intense strand of the prosperity gospel. I think this, this touches on the toxicity of that particular philosophy inside of marriage inside your own head, definitely inside an organization, but there is nothing about Tammy Faye Bakker that is not interesting and fascinating.

And you can just go down the, the deepest internet tunnel. Learning just what you learned in the movies and the documentaries, which is a massive amount. Like there's a whole YouTube channels of the former PTL talk shows and like how she did it. I'll tell you the part of the documentary that I have to tell you that I thought, okay, that's it.

This one person was talking about how they never seen anybody on TV, like her, that she would film an hour to two hours to maybe three hours in a day with no, teleprompting just basically add living the entire content. And I thought now that's it. That was the talent that is incredibly difficult to do.

Like that's where you see sort of the center point of her energy and her talent and how it was just not taken seriously. Also dearth, all source. That's the other. 

[00:58:50] Beth: Well, and this like Lula Rich, which we talked about last time has just an enormous intersection of faith and politics, enormous intersection, that lots of exploration of how the evangelical movement was being politically mobilized by the Republican party during this era and where Tammy Faye noticed that and spoke out about it and where she didn't.

And it's just, it's a lot to take in, especially if you're a person who's always kind of checking in on your own relationship to organized religion. It's just a, it's an, it's another interesting place to work some of that out. 

[00:59:29] Sarah: Well, not to mention if you grew up, like we did among that scandal. Like I remember the trial, I remember their downfall.

I don't remember their heights because I didn't have anybody that really watched PTL at my households, but I definitely remembered the rest of it. So, I love this historical re-examination of basically the entire eighties and nineties. It's really making me feel young and fresh. Let me tell you. Okay.

Well, thanks for listening today. It is always so fun bringing conversations about what we are reading to the show, and if you enjoy that and want to be a part of that in a bigger way, make sure you are subscribed to our extra credit book club. Our fall box will be going out at the start of October and we'll be announcing the books in it this week. So look for that. Don't miss out on being part of that conversation, all the link in the show notes and subscribe today. Thank you for joining us for another episode of pantsuit politics, until we talk to you again on Friday, keep it nuanced, y'all.

[01:00:26] Beth: Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production.  

Alise Napp is our managing director.

[01:00:32] Sarah: Megan Hart and Maggie Penton are our community engagement managers. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

[01:00:38] Beth: Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers. 

[01:00:42] Executive Producers (Read their own names): Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs.

The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, David McWilliams, Jared Minson, Emily Neesley, Danny Ozment, The Pentons, Tawni Peterson, Tracy Puthoff, Sarah Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Karin True, Amy Whited, Emily Holladay, Katy Stigers.

[01:01:14] Beth: Melinda Johnston, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer, and Tim Miller.





[01:01:24] Beth: To our Reagan episode on Friday because the praise of Reagan as we were strengthening the pregnant, I did it again, pregnancy!

[01:01:33] Sarah: Why do you want him to be pregnant?

[01:01:35] Beth: Okay.

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