Two Years of Covid

TOPICS DISCUSSED

  • Ketanji Brown Jackson Nomination

  • Ukrainian War

  • Federal Reserve & the Economy

  • Covid Check-In

  • Outside of Politics: Sleepovers

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EPISODE RESOURCES

TRANSCRIPT

Sarah [00:00:00] Is there anything we want to put in here that we really feel like we came back to? 

Beth [00:00:06] I mean, I think the Covid conversation is, like, I don't know how to describe it well, but I kind of want to let people know that it's a conversation about life and how we're thinking about our own attitudes at different points during the pandemic, and what we've learned from it, and what we're still learning. That kind of thing. 

Sarah [00:00:34] This is Sarah Stewart Holland. 

Beth [00:00:35] And this is Beth Silvers. 

Sarah [00:00:37] Thank you for joining us for Pantsuit Politics. Thanks for joining us for another episode of Pantsuit Politics. Today, on the surface, we're going to check in with the headlines around the Supreme Court confirmation hearings and the conflict in Ukraine, and we're going to talk about two years into the pandemic and where that leaves all of us. But deeper than that. We're talking about the strain we see in ourselves and in others and how that pressure has us giving a lot of grace. Outside of politics, we're going to talk about the parental dilemma that is sleepovers. Also a role for grace there, I think. 

Beth [00:01:23] Before we get started, we're really excited to be about six weeks out from our book launching into the world, Now what? How to Move Forward When We're Divided About Basically Everything, launches on May 3rd. We hope that you will preorder it today if you have not. If you've already preordered, thank you ceaselessly. We are so grateful to you. We hope that you are getting copies for yourself, for all your people. This is a book to be read in community, for sure. You can follow the link in our show notes to preorder on Amazon or wherever you like to buy books. And, of course, you can join us in Waco on April 30th for our live event there with Clint Harp and Kelly Harp celebrating the book. We'll have books for sale that night on April 30th, a little bit early. Tickets for that are in the show notes as well. Please help us realize Sarah's dream of being a New York Times bestselling author. 

Sarah [00:02:21] Before we check in with the state of the pandemic, let's check in with the rest of the news. Big week. The confirmation hearings for Kentaji Brown Jackson have begun. Opening statements are today, Monday, as we were recording. And the more intense phase of the hearings with questioning will begin Tuesday as this episode comes out. So we don't have a ton to talk about yet, but we will definitely cover it in more detail on Friday. Beth, what are you looking for as the hearings begin? 

Beth [00:02:47] Judge Katanji Brown Jackson has done this twice very recently, so she's a pro at this process. She understands how it works. People know her. They understand what she's about. 

Sarah [00:02:56] I also heard there was lots of prep late into the night happening as well. 

Beth [00:02:59] She is practicing for the questions that she anticipates. I think that even though there will be an element of showmanship as there always is in the United States Senate, especially because folks have learned that you can launch a presidential campaign on how you act in the confirmation of Supreme Court justices and that process. I think we'll have some of the circus, but much less than we had last time. I think she will handle it well, as she has done with her previous two confirmations. And I'm interested in hearing the discourse around her career as a public defender because I think that it comes at a moment when Americans are concerned about crime. But we also have had a lot of momentum around the reform of our criminal system. So I think there will be interesting conversations and writing about that, and I'm looking forward to discussing it more as this process unfolds. 

Sarah [00:03:53] Of course, the nomination hearings of a Supreme Court justice would be the top headline any other time, but the Russian invasion of Ukraine and the war in that area of the world continues to demand a lot of worldwide attention and American attention, of course. Over the weekend, the Institute for the Study of War released a report arguing that the war has reached a stalemate. This is a quote from the report. Stalemate is not armistice or ceasefire. It is a condition in war in which each side conducts offensive operations that do not fundamentally alter the situation. Those operations can be very damaging and cause enormous casualties. I don't know about you, Beth, but I thought that perspective both sounded right and also was helpful to me. 

[00:04:38] I'm really trying to, at any moment sort of when I'm consumed by the conflict in Ukraine, to not keep it in a two dimensional almost like anthropomorphizing Ukraine and Russia in this way that ignores the fact that there are just a lot of human beings involved making decisions all the time that have enormous consequences. And I don't mean just putting as much human detail on the enormous suffering, because I also think that that can kind of blind you in a way to the pragmatic realities of  what is happening there with the army. That's why I thought the Institute for the Study of War was helpful. It was like, let me talk about what's actually happening with the army's engaged in this conflict right now, and I thought that was very helpful for me. 

Beth [00:05:30] Yeah, I think pragmatically, a stalemate means protracted terrorism, and some attempt to respond to protracted terrorism. It feels pretty awful to watch. I am sure that for folks in Europe, it feels very scary because even as Ukraine has put up this fierce resistance, we don't see signs that Putin is changing his calculus, that he is considering rationally what kind of country am I leaving for myself to take over? He is taking out critical infrastructure through reports on those poor folks at Chernobyl who were forced to work for like three weeks in a nuclear plant where everything is so precise and the consequences of an error from fatigue and stress can be devastating. It's just a terrible situation. 

[00:06:25] And I struggle to take in a reasonable, healthy, quality of information about it because I do not want to turn away from the suffering. I do not want to turn it into a cartoon. And I think that point about anthropomorphizing the two countries is a really good one, Sarah, I don't want to do that. I also just feel an enormous sense of relief that I'm not a decision maker here because I feel personally so twisted in knots and conflicted and pulled in different directions about even what the U.S. response should be, let alone what decision makers in Europe must be thinking and feeling right now. So I'm grateful for being able to sit in my house and feel miserable about this safely when what's happening to other people right now is so awful. 

Sarah [00:07:12] Ezra Klein on his podcast has been having a lot of conversations where they're based in the assumption that Putin is a rational actor, which is hard. That's a hard thing to hear or think about. But it has, weirdly, helped me think about the conflict, as this Institute for the Study of War did. Just the idea that, again, it's not this two dimensional battle of good and evil. It's a human being taking in information from a very specific worldview and then making decisions. And that to me makes it easier for me to wrap my head around. Not in a less painful way, not even necessarily in a less disempowering way. But just in a way where I feel like I'm taking in the information. In a way that is contributive if that makes sense. 

[00:08:07] Like, in a way that it's increasing my understanding, even if that understanding is just of how horrific a stalemate can be. Even if that understanding is how the death of generals is not affecting Putin, even if it's an understanding of how limited the American options are. It just it feels less just pointless, and it gives me a direction for my thinking. And it's almost like that's the best we can do. At least it's not a it's like a direction for my thinking as opposed to just a stuck in one spot thinking. Even though, you know, the argument of this report is that's exactly what this conflict is, is stuck in one spot. 

Beth [00:08:55] So I've really been working on not being hyper rational, which is a tendency that I have that I have identified and some personal work that I'm doing. And so I worry sometimes, especially when I'm listening to Ezra Klein Show, which I do and reading some of the more academic work. I read foreign affairs every single day, at least one piece from foreign affairs. And sometimes I think I'm getting too academic here because because that's a coping mechanism for me and I need to remember to be in my body as well and in my gut as well. And, you know, that's just the hard part about being a human and having all of these faculties. There's always a place to run inside your own body and head when things are this hard and this difficult to make any sense of. I'm going to talk more about that during our Covid conversation. 

[00:09:45] I have a feeling that just making sense of things right now feels really difficult to me. And so I'm trying to just give myself permission to not make sense of it. To do the academic work in doses, but not to use that as a coping mechanism. To engage with the heartbreaking photographs and the stories of people in Ukraine on an individual level in doses, but not to get overwhelmed by that. To hear our listeners pushing us on why we care so much about this and elevated above other conflicts. And to hear from listeners who say, "Why isn't America doing more? I'm sitting here in Europe on a military base wondering what we're doing." I'm trying to just be with all of it in all those different spaces in my body, and that is unpleasant. But, again, I am also trying to hold a sense of gratitude that that is my biggest challenge when it could be otherwise so easily. 

Sarah [00:10:35] So I want to take a hard turn, but I don't think it's unrelated to what you just said, which is with regards to the economy, because I feel like this journey that you just described probably feels very familiar to Jerome Powell. So the Federal Open Market Committee officially raised its benchmark interest rate by point to five percent points. Now, we knew this one was coming. They been broadcasting this for quite a while, but we don't know what happens next. 

[00:10:59] And, to me, what you were saying about you have to acknowledge the reactivity you need to lean into the intellectualization but balance the two, feels very relevant to the Federal Reserve and  assessing this current moment and trying to decide what to do. That is also a decision maker I do not envy, especially as we just keep getting sort of more economic hurdles. We have a workers strike in Canada with their second largest railroad that is expected to affect the supply chain. We have a workers strike at Canada's second largest railroad. We have continued shutdowns from Covid and China. Obviously rest of the global food supply from the war in Ukraine. There's just -- it's a lot. 

Beth [00:11:45]  I know just enough about economics to be dangerous. I am trying to learn more about it and study more about it because, to me, is a discipline that shows up in all other disciplines. And a heightened understanding of economics, I think, contributes to a more realistic understanding of the world and all the factors influencing every decision. So with that prelude about how little I know here and how I'm trying to be a student of this, I am worried that we are putting in front of Jerome Powell a situation and asking him to resolve it when perhaps he does not have the tools to resolve the situation. 

[00:12:23] I am worried that we're asking the Fed to be much more of an answer here than the Fed can actually be because him moving the interest rate just doesn't help with the supply chain, and it doesn't help with the commodities markets, and it doesn't help with a lot of the things that people are experiencing the most pain around. I'm not saying they shouldn't do it, but I'm worried that we keep talking about inflation, and I'm not sure inflation is actually where the frustration and stress on a lot of American households exist. 

Sarah [00:13:01] If you're Jerome Powell, I sure hope that you took this job understanding that people are going to ask you to solve problems you couldn't always solve as the first thing. Surely he understood that problem. Just like if you take the role of president, I hope you understand they're going to ask you to solve problems you have no way of solving.  I mean, in a real Spider-Man with great power comes great responsibility mindset, I think inflation is a huge, huge, stress on American families. And inflation is not just an American problem. So I think that that is a huge piece of the puzzle. But, again, I think it's back to the conversation we had that it's just prioritization, like, that's what's so difficult right now. No one's saying it's not a problem, but is it the most important problem? I think the supply chain inflation feels more acute, but that will not be true in six months, I think, or even three months. 

[00:13:52] I think the supply chain and that instability is a sort of like an undercurrent of stress. Again, feels like we're creeping into our COVID conversation any minute. But it's huge and is going to get much worse. I think we just are only right as we're about to come out from the instability created from the pandemic, like there's all these additional forces weighing on the the supply chain. And it's just like supply chain is like we get in this like two dimensional conversation where it's just so hard to put words around what that means to people. I don't think we know. I think we'll probably have like sociological studies and psychological studies decades from now, they're like, oh, this is what happens when there's just lots of media reporting that you might not be able to get something. Like, there could be a global food supply chain crisis. Like, I just don't think we understand how that plays on our psyches yet and probably won't for a long time. But I know enough to know it's not great. That's for sure. 

Beth [00:14:55] I think what I mean is exactly that, that what do we mean when we say inflation is a problem? I think what we mean is the gas is really expensive, the groceries are getting more expensive, that  taking a trip is getting more expensive. If you dig into why is milk more expensive right now, that's a different answer than why are products based on wheat more expensive, right? The people doing journalism around this, I think it would be helpful probably to Jerome Powell and perhaps everyone else, to write the story about why is milk more expensive or why is wheat more expensive or why is gas more expensive. Because I do feel like we continue to use inflation as this umbrella over all of it, when that implies a set of tools that are just not going to fix a lot of this pain. 

[00:15:46] And I think another thing we're all kind of shoving under the inflation umbrella is the labor supply shortage. I was in Louisville with my family over the weekend. Downtown is a mess. It was incredibly difficult to have lunch because of the labor supply issue, and there were signs that said like, we'll do our best to serve you. But the wait times were huge for restaurants that were maybe half full, and you could just see the strain of the whole thing. What the Federal Reserve is doing has nothing to do with that problem. So I just kind of want to be careful about using inflation to describe all of our economic woes, when the truth is commerce is struggling right now from what we are used to. And I think we need lots of new vocabulary to help us describe how it's struggling so we can figure out how we can help those struggles. 

Sarah [00:16:39] I think strain is a great word for it and also a great transition into our Covid check in next. The World Health Organization declared COVID 19 a pandemic on March 11th, 2020. Here we are on March 22nd, 2022, many years later. And since then, six million people have died globally with almost one million American lives lost. We do have highly effective vaccines and continue to see falling case rates, hospitalization rates and death rates after the last Omicron surge here in the United States. 

[00:17:31] However, vaccines for those under five remain evasive. Pfizer recently submitted to have a fourth shot approved. And cases are rising in Europe from an Omicron sub-variant. A new word I didn't know I was going to need in my life regularly. And, of course, we continue to see exactly what we were just discussing in the previous segment. The long term consequences of COVID playing out on our economy, our institutions, even our bodies. So we thought it was time to do a check in on where we are with the pandemic and where we could be in the next six months. 

Beth [00:18:02] If you're a new listener, we're so glad that you're here. Just to give you like a brief recap of where we've been on COVID, we both got vaccinated as quickly as we could. We have both had some very personal experiences with folks who've had COVID. I had COVID in January, and we are both boosted. Is there anything else you think that we need to lay out in terms of our personal kind of history and biases here, Sarah? 

Sarah [00:18:29] Our children are vaccinated. 

Beth [00:18:31] Our Children are vaccinated, that's right. So that's kind of where we've been. As I think back throughout the pandemic, Sarah, I find it much harder today to be angry and frustrated with my fellow Americans than I found it in March of 2020. You know, my grandmother, Joy, had this great phrase that's gotten me through so many things in my life. When it first came out, we were going to be at home for two weeks, perhaps. I thought of her and how if she'd been alive, she would have said, "Well, you can stand on your head for two weeks." And I think I've had that mentality about a lot of the pandemic. You can wear a mask for two weeks because you could stand on your head for two weeks. Beth, you can have your kids doing school on the computer at home for two months because you can stand on your head for two months. 

[00:19:19] And what I've realized is maybe all that was true, but two years is a totally different conversation. It's a totally different conversation and seeing variant, subvariant, constantly learning new words, constantly understanding what a highly effective vaccine promises and what it does not promise. I just find it really hard to be mad at other people because this has been a lot and it's had a ton of unknowns. And if I regret anything in my own response, it is some of the certainty that I brought to it earlier on, and some of the judgment that I brought to it. Because even people who were truly being awful, and there were some, even those folks were coping with something so hard that I just have to keep going back to a sense of grace for myself and for everyone else. 

Sarah [00:20:08] Yeah, I think the people I may be mad at are still the ones that are so mad. That still brings such certainty to the conversation. I kind of want to be like, "Have you been alive for the last two years? You still feel that strongly?" Like, you get it, you know, and you know what's right, because that's bold. That is very bold. I was 100 percent certain. I didn't even consider the idea of booster shots. I was 100 percent certain these mRNA  vaccines would prevent infection and we could all go on. That's how I was defensive of the science. And I was wrong, 100 percent wrong about that. There are lots of other areas of the pandemic I was not wrong about, but that was one of them. And I just I agree with you. Like, I just think even the people who reacted and continue to react in ways that I'm like, "What planet do you live on?" I just still think that there is enough nuance and complexity and gray area surrounding all this, but I think it's really hard to draw a red line and decide who belongs on one side and on the other. 

[00:21:13] I just think it's way more complicated than that, and I don't even know the point of that because whether you think your red line is set in stone or not, how you could not look around at the strain, that word you picked up from our first conversation, on everyone, on our institutions, on our economy, on our bodies and think this is the way to fix the strain. To ease the strain is to double down on my self-righteousness. Again, I'm and Enneagram one. Self-righteousness is my favorite emotion. But it is certainly not helpful. I'm learning that in my old age that the second I try to control people, I lose all ability to influence them. But it feels like so often like people want to numb their own strain by doubling down on that self-righteous. They're not looking to influence anybody, they're just looking to feel better. And I guess you're right, I guess those people need as much grace too. 

Beth [00:22:14]  I'm not mad at them either, because I think we're all just coping in ways that we know how to cope. I don't know how to talk to my kids about a lot of things I'm realizing. I'm really good at talking my kids through hard stuff. I'm not scared of any topic. You give it to me, I'll have a discussion with Jane and Ellen, and I'll figure it out. But what I don't know how to do is, as we are looking at things, simple things that come up like not having servers at a restaurant, I kind of struggle with whether to tell them this is a problem created by Covid, as though it's something that could snap back to normal once we've got things well in hand, because I know that's not true, right? 

[00:22:53] So I'm trying to find new words to use just to say this is an effect, and I don't know how long the effect is going to last. And I actually don't really know what changes this, and I don't know if it ever goes back or if it looks like something different in the long run. You know, ambiguity is like a sign of maturity, right? So I am struggling with how much to bring my 11 and six-year-old into that level of ambiguity. But that's what it is for me. It is just a whole sea of, I don't know. I don't know if the vaccine will meet this challenge. I don't know if we are going to need some new pandemic tools for a new sub variant. I don't know how long Covid is going to show up, seemingly at random sometimes. Just bringing things crashing down in their bodies. I don't know. 

Sarah [00:23:45] Yeah, I have to watch myself with that. I really want to talk my kids out of it. And then I remember that legalistic thinking is developmentally appropriate and I have to let it go. And it took me a long time and a lot of maturity to let that go. I'm still working on it. Covid sure accelerated the process for me. I can tell you that much. There's no springing back, surely to God, we've all abandoned that by now, because that's just not how history works. You know, we had a conversation before we started recording about going back to our conversation about Ukraine, I've had a couple of people come up to me and say, "I thought we were past this. I thought we, as human beings, we're past this." I think what they mean it's not war, but like a land war in Europe where a democracy is invaded and somebody just says, this is ours now. And I thought, I get it. And also history repeats itself. 

[00:24:39] Human progress is real, but history repeats itself. And that's what I just try to remind myself. I think there's a way to get in your head space, and I feel like I read a lot of writing that is in this headspace of not quite all is lost, but we're in this new era of terribleness. We're in this new era where everything that went before was prosperity, we didn't believe it, and we didn't understand it or we didn't appreciate it. And now we're in this time where we're really just seeing how everything's kind of falling apart. Our institutions are crumbling. All trust is lost. War and authoritarianism on the -- like, see what I'm saying? Like, I can really go down this path because there's just a lot of writing out there that is in that posture. And I just don't connect with it, I think there's a real sort of negativity conflict bias. And you can't blame human beings for having a negativity conflict bias considering what we have all been through in the last two years with the pandemic. 

[00:25:50] But, you know, there have been pandemics before in human history. Some of them went much worse than this one. And this one's pretty bad. But it's discouraging to me, and I think disempowering to me, to feel like I think humans are good at being in the space of, like, we're encountering this totally new terrible moment in human history. One, because I don't think it's true. And, two, because it sort of just shuts down our problem solving empathy, grace, as opposed to saying these are problems that humans have encountered in different forms before. We're not going to fix them now, we never will. We can continue to improve our outcomes and to accept that we're not going to reach some magical moment in human history where there's no human suffering. That's just not on the menu and never was and never will be. 

[00:26:48] And to put this pressure on ourselves to feel like like we had it and we lost it, or if we could just get it together and stop fighting, we could get there, I just think it increases the strain in a really unhelpful way when there's enough to be strained about. There's enough problems, there's enough issues, we don't have to create this sense of, like, we're in this this new moment where everything is falling apart and it's terrible. 

Beth [00:27:14] It's just tough. Because I've learned a lot from Donald Trump's language, to be honest with you. And one of the things that I learned -- 

Sarah [00:27:22] Didn't see that one coming. 

Beth [00:27:22] I like to keep you on your toes now and then. One of the things that I learned from Donald Trump's language is listening to how he had to use superlatives about everything. It's like a thing is meaningless if it's not the best, the worst, the greatest, the most. It just helped me understand that that does really speak. We are dramatic beings. We are wired for drama and we love what we produce when we're in these extreme moments of stress, right? The most enduring art and literature come from these places of real despair. 

[00:27:54] And I think we kind of need to feel like it is a unique experience that we're having here, instead of just seeing ourselves as a continuation of a flow of history that has always a lot of joy and suffering taking place simultaneously. Just like I'm realizing in my personal life that maybe a lot of living and aging in particular is constantly fighting against death while also deepening your relationship to it. So I think that you're absolutely right that it's comforting to remember that it has always been so and will always be so. And I also think something in us really needs to live in to the uniqueness of the experience we're having. 

Sarah [00:28:41] It feels as if the superlatives in a way shut down our experiencing of the real drama, of the real joy, of the real suffering. It's like this very weird coping technique. We have to decide what's going to happen, right? We can't just be present in that this is enormously complicated and difficult and full of suffering, and there is something truly terrible happening. It has to be either, one, this is why we got here and this is whose fault it is. Or, two, this is why we'll never get out of it, and this is whose fault it is. And I hate that. It just feels like it's such a compression, and like an exit strategy. Like, well, let's just shrink it down and figure out who to blame so we can all move on. And the strain we feel in so many areas of American life to me are because we keep trying to do that. We keep trying to blame the people who won't vaccinate or who won't mask or the people whose politics are different than ours. 

[00:29:53] Or blame the labor shortage on X policy or the immigration crisis on X politician. And just, to me, instead of saying like, we are the committee. We're here in this moment, there will not be an easy solution because there's not an easy villain either. And so it always feels like just a way to get out, just to get out from the messiness. And, I mean, I think you're right. I think that's what Donald Trump was so excellent at harnessing. And this is why Hillary Clinton suffered from the opposite, right? It's because she kind of was like, "Well, it's more complicated than that." Nobody wants to hear that. But it is. I mean, I don't know what else to tell you. It's more complicated, guys. And that's so hard in moments of stress. And I think that is the strain you see in conversations around America's foreign policy, around public health, around all of it. 

Beth [00:30:53] Yeah, because even where you achieve, we are the committee level thinking, it's still easy to get frozen with all the awareness that the past couple of years have created. I was listening to a conversation about this subvariant. It still was kind of talked about in terms of duality, like, there are people who are really, really, worried about it and there are people who are done with the pandemic and ready to move on. And I thought, I don't know how you make decisions in this environment because let's say the subvariant increases transmission dramatically, but that most of those cases are quite mild. That's still a really big problem in a country that has a labor shortage. That's still a really big problem when you have a health care system that is trying to play catch up from tons of issues that went ignored during the pandemic. Because there had to be issues that are currently really urgent for people are hard to squeeze in when you've got the backlog and you've got the present, and you know  with higher transmission you're going to have some people hospitalized with Covid. 

[00:31:57] So if you're a nurse, I don't know how you get into a new phase of the pandemic mentality because you being sick for a couple of days has dramatic consequences for you, right? And so even when you get into a sort of I'm not here to blame anyone, I just want to take one step forward together the best we can. We have learned so much and have seen everything's connection to everything else in a way that it is just hard to know what to do next. And I think we can do it. To me, being able to take one step, and one step, and one step, requires us to put down a lot of the blame that we're shoveling. And I think also requires us to sort of just take a breath and realize we constantly get to reevaluate. I mean, if nothing else, maybe we all just need to think more like scientists and sort of, well, I try this and I see what happens. And then I make my next decision after I learned from this one. 

Sarah [00:32:58] Yeah, as an Enneagram one, I love for there to be a right decision, and I'm just coming to the peaceful acceptance of, there often isn't. There's perhaps the best decision. But right feels unattainable to me. And in some real ways it feels not sort of crushing because we'll get to make another one. If nothing else, two years out of the pandemic, we can all accept that we'll get to decide how we feel about it again under a new phase and a new variant or some variant or no variants. Like, we're going to get to keep reevaluating this. And so putting this pressure on ourselves to decide how it is -- I saw a tweet that was like, what are you going to do with your one wild and precious time between variants, right? Like because it's just this wave. And, yeah, they can feel crushing until you just accept that's like, this is it. We'll get another chance. You screw this wave up, you get another chance. Now, the stakes are high. For some people, higher than others, obviously. 

[00:34:06] I'm not trying to make light of the fact that six million people have died. It's just hard to comprehend. It's really, really, difficult to comprehend. And the ripple effects of that across the globe, much less than just in America. There is a way to embody and emphasize and take seriously the stakes, the cost, the impact of the pandemic without putting ourselves in this all or nothing position. This we're doing the right thing or we're doing the wrong thing. The policy is correct. The policy is not correct. Like, that sort of binary position, I think, is some of the strain we see in ourselves, in our institutions and lots of areas of American life right now. And I feel like the sooner we can lay that down and accept that complexity that we're talking about, and give ourselves and each other grace that we're dealing with that complexity, I don't want to say the better we all will be, because that's not a realistic standard, but it would feel like we're carrying just a little bit less to me. 

Beth [00:35:34] I guess the only thing I would add to that is that I keep learning for myself about the thickness of this pandemic. So something I've been noticing in myself is that I am very comfortable with the fact that I will die someday because of life experiences that I've had. And I have learned to be comfortable with the fact that all the people I love will die and not in the order that I wish, and probably not in ways that are always going to make sense to me. Ellen, my six-year-old, says to me all the time, "Mommy, you're going to die before I do." And I usually say to her something like, That's what we hope. That's how it's supposed to go. But you'll never get rid of me, you know, because I'll always be there in your heart." So I can be present with that. I can feel it and be OK with it. I can handle like the idea of generically all people will die. 

[00:36:29] But I have gotten really stuck around six million people dying through this pandemic, and a war coming on the heels of that, with all of these people having to leave their homes and the level of death that I think we're going to see in Russia and Ukraine over the next few weeks. I'm having trouble with that level of death. So not to make this all about me, but I'm just realizing I had already gotten through the stage of I will die and the people that I love will die. And those are stages that can tie us all up in psychological knots for years. Being able to just like be with that part of being human is so hard. So I guess I'm just saying, of course, we're all struggling. And of course, those struggles show up in ways that are unexpected. 

[00:37:14] And that's what I mean by the thickness of this isn't even just this many people got Covid, this many people died from Covid, here's the result on our markets. It's that we are all kind of having to ask new questions about what it is that we're doing here depending on what we brought in to the situation. And if you can kind of look around and see that Sarah and I, whenever we're talking to groups, we'll often use this metaphor of a backpack. Just remembering what's in people's kind of psychological backpack is helpful. That is carrying me through some of these difficult conversations. 

Sarah [00:37:49] Yeah, for me, it's less about death and more about suffering. I realized the older I get that there are people who have a theology or a philosophy or an ethic or a set of values around suffering. And there are people who avoid thinking about suffering at all cost. Some of that is largely driven by personality. It's not about, I think, whether you're a good person or a bad person. But, you know, Covid has crystallized and clarified my understanding of the inevitability of suffering in human life and human existence, and the potential role of suffering in human life, and the ever-present nature of suffering and in human life. And so, in a way, I think that's why it doesn't feel new to me and that why those conversations about like this new phase or place that humanity finds itself in or Americans find themselves in just always ring kind of hollow. Because I think, no, it's not necessarily new. The one constant in human history is suffering. But I think you're right, I think for people in a culture, and I don't want to say people because I feel like that individualizes in a way that's not very helpful and can feel like judgment. And that's not what I mean. 

[00:39:38] But in a culture, and an American culture, I don't think I'm breaking new ground here when I say did not exactly prioritize a deeper understanding of suffering or death. It feels so heavy and so thick and so difficult, and I don't think that's going anywhere two years in. I think that understanding, that sort of cultural struggle, that societal struggle with the suffering from the pandemic and now the suffering that we see across the globe and the suffering we feel as a consequence of the strain on our institutions and our lives and our families, that's just going to continue. And I'm just thankful that we have a place to have that conversation here at Pantsuit Politics. Beth, you requested conversation around the dilemma of the child sleepover. Now, first definitionally, are you talking about a single friend sleepover or are you talking more about a slumber party situation. 

Beth [00:40:57] Slumber party situation. I find to be a much more stressful 

Sarah [00:41:00] Multiple children. Okay, we are talking about multiple children sleepover. Now, when we decided to have this conversation, I went to the internet and I said, "Internet, what is the appropriate age for a child to have a slumber party?" And the internet doesn't have an opinion. At least, not consistent on this topic, which is shocking, I thought the internet had opinion on everything. But it's all over the map. Now, it seems to be a general, settling around seven to nine. But what I was really shocked to see is that the American Academy of Pediatrics does not have a position on this. 

Beth [00:41:29] That's not very helpful. That doesn't solve my problem. Hyper rational me would like an answer. Thank you so much. 

Sarah [00:41:38] I'm sorry. I really thought they would. I thought there would be like -- I was like, oh, I'll just ask the American Academy of Pediatrics what their stance on this is. And they said no comment. There was an article I read where a guy said that we're accelerating the age for this. Which I'm usually like very into those arguments, like we're pushing kids more than we used to. But, you know, I have a lot of pictures from slumber parties when me and my friends were definitely like five six young. Because he was saying 10 or later, and I was like, that doesn't ring quite true to me. It seems that there does seem to be a coalescence around like seven to nine. And I realize  I was probably pushing my kids a little young. And I know that because they came home. But how do we feel about seven to nine? 

Beth [00:42:24] Well, that feels less scary to me. It is older kids where this feels like a harder call. I am totally comfortable with four seven-year-olds in their sleeping bags watching a movie in my basement. Like, that's easy. It is this 10 plus where Jane and her friends -- so my daughter Jane is 11. They want to have group sleepovers often, and they are great kids. And they have great parents. And so I am trying to settle myself that that's okay. But it is when they get to a place where they have some expectation of privacy. And there are just more themes happening in their lives in general that this makes me uncomfortable. 

Sarah [00:43:11] Okay. Well, now I do have a stance on the maximum age, which is also not a conversation that happens and I think it should. My mother-in-law raised five children, four boys and a baby girl, and the position in her home was no more sleepovers after the age of 13. You may not go anywhere else after the age of 13. You are only going somewhere else because you want to do something that you could not get away with under my roof. And the second I heard her, I don't even remember the first time I heard this. I don't know if she said or if Nicholas was telling me about it, but I thought, yes, ma'am, that's my rule. 

[00:43:48] You know, sometimes you just hear parenting things and you're like, yep, that's it. Like, I had a real estate agent once who said, "Can't get your driver's license till you get your Eagle Scout." And I thought, that's it. That's the rule. Taking that one. And so my kids know, 13 we're done. Now, you can have a friend to our home to sleep over. And I realized there is some hypocrisy there. And I think that was her role. Maybe I needed to clarify with my mother-in-law, but just at 13, I was like, yes, that's a great idea, because I definitely know what I was doing at sleepovers post age 13. 

Beth [00:44:18] See, I wasn't. My sleepover experiences were great and I had lots of them, especially in high school. 

Sarah [00:44:26] Ya'll never snuck out or did bad things? 

Beth [00:44:28] No. Listen, I grew up in a really rural area, though, so that defined a lot of things differently. I got over with people because it was practical. I didn't want my parents to have to drive 45 minutes to get me at 10 o'clock on a Friday night, right? 

Sarah [00:44:41] Okay. But you don't live in a rural area. 

Beth [00:44:43] And I think some of that, I think some of the struggle I feel is understanding that my kids are growing up differently than I did. They just are. And so I have to have some different tactics and a different framework. And it's not just things are so different here these days, it's I live in a really different setting than I grew up in. And I really trust my girls. And I am really especially in this like tween stage, working on how do I get to yes with Jane? Because I want a giant bank of trust with her. I want her to tell me everything. I want her to be able to call me in any situation. So I really am trying to say yes to her as much as I can, and I want to give her strategy. 

[00:45:25] So I  have said yes to some sleepovers that I really want to just say no to. And we've had a long conversation beforehand about -- and she laughs at me as I start going down this road, which is good. I think that's a good posture where she's having fun with it instead of thinking that I am a worrier. But I'll say, "What are we going to do if you're uncomfortable about anything?" If you're just uncomfortable about anything, it's a little tense in the air and you want to leave, I'm going to come get you right away. You don't have to tell me why, but I will come get you immediately. And we kind of go through all of these things, and I hope that I'm giving her some good skills. But, oh, it just ties me up in knots. It really does. 

Sarah [00:46:01] Well, let me tell you this. I grew up in the burbs side and I grew up in a rural area. There were lots of not great things happening at sleepovers with boys, with sneaking out, with alcohol, with just bullying. I did read an article that said the two non-negotiables are the kids have to remain together at all times and cell phones are checked at the door, which I thought those were two very strong, great, non-negotiable rules. 

Beth [00:46:25] I really like checking cell phones at the door. I like that a lot. 

Sarah [00:46:27] Yeah. And I like that you have to be together because that's definitely where a lot of things went sideways at like girls sleepovers. Two people would go off, or three people, you know, like, that's not a good scene. Bad idea. However, I will say this. My mom did not live in a let's get to yes zone. That's not her vibe. Definitely wasn't Nicholas's mom's vibe. There is no trying to get to yes. And I think she would tell you, and she was right, that there were times when she just did not like the person that I was supposed to go to their house. And she said no. And she didn't give two shits if she got to yes. Like, it was no. And she was right. So I think, like, there's a balance there, because if your gut is saying, like, I don't want you to go to that person's house, there's probably a reason for that. It's still hard, though, because I think you're right, like, just no, no, no, no, no, I have to watch that. Nicholas and I both, we love no. It's just so easy. No, we don't want to. No, that requires way more decision making on my part. And I like the one decision, which is no. So I have to watch that. 

[00:47:22] But I do think, you know, there's real safety concerns. Like, do these people secure their guns? I mean, less when you're talking about tween girls. But I don't know world's wild out there. You know, God knows what the next TikTok trend will be. And it definitely was sexual abuse. I'm going to link in the show notes to an article from Patty Fitzgerald, who has been for probably 10 plus years my most trusted expert on child sex abuse and how to talk to your kids and how to prevent that and how to think about it. Because I do think like sleepovers, there are some real questions about, like, you have to make sure you know who else will be there. Will there be older siblings or will there be other adults there for a social occasion? Like, it's very, very, important. So it's just there's a lot there. And that's why, again, 13 I'm done. I'm out. I'm over it. I'm not going to do it no more. 

Beth [00:48:06] I don't know that I can say that. Let me clarify for people who don't know me. I work to get to yes, so that my noes are meaningful. There are some noes. And what I want is for her to hear those noes and understand that there's a reason. And for us to have a conversation about that because I want to raise two independent young women who advocate for themselves well. I think I'm doing that. All signs point to yes on their self advocacy, that's for sure. 

Sarah [00:48:33] That's what I was going to say. Like, I love you, but they are not going to hear your no and still love it. [Crosstalk]. 

Beth [00:48:39] They are not going to love it. I don't care if they love it or not, but I want them to understand and I want to be able to have a conversation about it. 

Sarah [00:48:44] Vivid memories in my living room. Just ongoing debate. Why can't I go? Why can't I go? Why can't I go? Until my mom was like, "I'm not talking about it anymore because I said so. See you later, sister." 

Beth [00:48:55] So I respect that. I have a party I vividly remember wanting to go to in high school that my mom would not let me go to. And I did a lot of why, why, why. And even now as an adult, I understand her answer and I still kind of think it was the wrong call because when I got to college, I got into some situations that I did not know how to handle because I had no practice.  It was stay away from anything that could be hard, instead of sometimes you are going to be in a hard situation and here's what you do. And that was really upsetting for me as a young college student to just feel like overwhelmed instead of having some skills. So I'm trying to figure out, especially here in the suburbs where I am confident there will be some hard situations where she could acquire those skills, what's the balance of allowing them into those situations versus protecting them from them? 

Sarah [00:49:49] That's so interesting because I had the realization in college like, oh, I get it. I wanted my mom to trust me like I was an adult and I was not. She was trusting me to the level deserved by a 15 to 18 year old because I was a lot of like, I get good grades. Why won't you let me do what I want to do? A lot of that. I'm a good kid. Why won't you let me go? Why will you let me do this? So I think she was right.   I had a I had a high school boyfriend that I was allowed to move about in the world with for the most part. And it's like I think back on particularly the parties I wanted to go to,  I feel like I got enough experience with that. Now, she got lucky because I fell in with the youth group crowd, which was just another level of social pressure that I got to practice. But that's really interesting. You have to learn to self advocate and to say no and to just be in those hard conversations. I think some of that, though, is just like the hard reality we'll have to face as our kids get older. 

[00:50:50] And that my mom told me from the beginning, I think is true, is in teenage years so much is just predicted by the peer group. Like, I grew up with teachers and they would always be like this class is wild. This class is reasonable. This class is chaotic. And it's just like that's just a roll of the dice. And it's like in a lot of ways predicated on sort of who their peers are and how are those peers parents. And just so many things like, I don't know, how Covid worked down in sixth grade. Like, there's just so much you can't control for. They're going to gain those experiences a lot based on who's around them and less on like your call.  My mom was really clear on that. Like, especially as a kid. Like, ease the pressure on yourself as you have teenagers because so much is just like, what's your peer group like?  Are they intense? Are they chill? And you just have so little control over that. 

Beth [00:51:45] That is why I'm saying yes now, because the group of girls that Jane wants to do this with are great kids with great parents. And not that there are terrible kids, but there are parents who are following a lot of the same types of behaviors, practices, et cetera, that we are, that prioritize the same types of things, that have the same level of oversight that we might have. So that gives me a lot of comfort. And it is why I want to be ready. When there's a no, I'm going to be firm on my no, but I don't want to just say no because it's hard on me to think about her being out there. 

Sarah [00:52:20] Oh, parenting. Who invented the system? It is terrible. I would like to speak to the [Inaudible]. Thank you guys for sticking with us through, again, typically wide ranging conversation here at Pantsuit Politics? Don't forget to preorder our new book from your favorite book retailer. We are so excited for you to read it and want you to have it the minute it comes out over a few days early, if you want to join us in Waco. We will be back here with you again on Friday, and until then, keep it nuanced ya'll.  

Beth [00:52:54] Pantsuit Politics is produced by Studio D Podcast Production. Alice Napp is our managing director. 

Sarah [00:52:59] Maggie Penton is our community engagement manager. Dante Lima is the composer and performer of our theme music. 

Beth [00:53:05] Our show is listener-supported. Special thanks to our executive producers 

Execuive Producers (Read their own names) [00:53:09] Martha Bronitsky, Linda Daniel, Ali Edwards, Janice Elliot, Sarah Greenup, Julie Haller, Helen Handley, Tiffany Hassler, Emily Holladay, Katie Johnson, Katina Zugenalis Kasling, Barry Kaufman, Molly Kohrs. 

[00:53:27] The Kriebs, Laurie LaDow, Lilly McClure, Emily Neesley, The Pentons, Tawni Petersen, Tracy Puthoff, Sara Ralph, Jeremy Sequoia, Katie Stigers, Karin True, Onica Ulveling.  Nick and Alysa Vilelli, Katherine Vollmer, Amy Whited. 

Beth [00:53:45] Jeff Davis, Melinda Johnston, Ashley Thompson, Michelle Wood, Joshua Allen, Morgan McHugh, Nichole Berklas, Paula Bremer and Tim Miller. 

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