NY Mag Promotes Regretting Having Kids (Simone Thinks It’s A Good Idea)

Today on Based Camp, we go over the accounts of women who reportedly regret having kids, as covered by New York Magazine, and discuss why they’re so miserable. Among other things, we explore: * How the hardest phase is often the early years, especially infancy and toddlerhood, and that regret can be heavily shaped by sleep deprivation, pain, and the shock of being the default caregiver* How the same events can feel unbearable or manageable depending on whether a person frames them negatively or as part of a meaningful life project* The utility of thinking through failure modes in advance, building contingency plans, and explicitly discussing logistics before having children rather than relying on vague social assumptions* How if someone dislikes themselves or their partner, that unhappiness often gets magnified through children because kids reflect both parents* How online communities like “regretful parents” can reinforce misery by rewarding negative storytelling, though they acknowledge that some parents are genuinely unsupported and hurtingUltimately, parent regret is often driven less by children themselves and more by a mix of poor preparation, weak reasons for having kids, lack of support, bad partner fit, and untreated personal issues like depression, anxiety, ADHD, or body image problems. Many of these risks can be headed off by brutally honest parenting discussions, early planning, and choosing parenthood deliberately rather than as a default life stageEpisode Notes* A lot of conservative-leaning influencers are talking about an article in the New York Times, part of The Cut’s “Oh, Baby” series* Broadly speaking, they’re trashing NY Mag for discouraging motherhood and/or trashing the mothers for various reasons* Though some, like Brett Cooper, have more balanced takes: she argues that the viral “I regret having children” discourse is really about unsupported, isolated mothers and bad matching in marriage, not mothers hating their kids* I disagree with all the takes I’ve seen though* This article is great* These accounts are super important* Anyone who is serious about kids should read them—and moreHere’s why:* The best way to get through something tough is to:* Have a strong reason for having kids* Understand where things go wrong* Heading off serious issues, especially with your first child in their first years, makes the difference between hating parenthood and wanting a huge family* A positive experience with first kids was the top common factor Dr. Catherine Ruth Pakaluk identified when interviewing college-educated American mothers of over five kids* We, personally, have experienced a lot of the negative things (or rough equivalents) the mothers in this article experienced, but because we had a strong “why” behind having kids and we had prepared for a lot of the potential downsides, we were able to weather the hazardsWhat we would encourage:* Going through r/regretfulparents and cataloging all the things that go wrong* Building contingency plans for those things* We did this with our relationship—in building our relationship contract—and prospective parents would be wise to do this before having kids* I.e. build contingency plan items into a parenting contract, or adding them to a relationship contractThe ArticleThe article opens with: “Parent regret is more common than you might think — the r/regretfulparents sub-Reddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate — though stigma makes it hard to admit in real life. Below, three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.”The Cut - I regret having children: https://archive.is/BF3zn34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old* Didn’t have kids for a strong reason* “When my husband and I were dating, his deal-breaker was having kids. I didn’t feel the same way, but I didn’t see life without children as an option. It always felt like the next stage of life for us. I remember telling my husband, “I’m worried; I love our life now and I’m not sure what it’s going to look like with a child.””* Has personal issues which she now has to contend with in her kids (easy to be frustrated, colickey, etc.).* Struggled with postpartum depression* Perfectionist* Got diagnosed with ADHD after suspecting her oldest had it.* “When my younger daughter struggles to get dressed, I try to distract her or make compromises, but in the end, she’s screaming, and I don’t know how to make it stop, so I just shut down.”* Is admittedly in the “hell zone” of parenthood (after six, things get awesome)* She’s not wrong that parents of especially young children are less happy* But that’s not the point30-year-old European mother of a 3-year-old* Grew up sheltered with a stay-at-home mom; married at 22* Mother said she would help out with a new baby* Was constrained to bed rest in her fist trimester* Horrible recovery from birth (painful to move)* Mother and husband didn’t help that much* “My husband had a month and a half of paternity leave, but the only helpful thing he did during that time was change her diapers, though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face; I had the feeling he never believed how much pain I was in. My mom helped, but she didn’t like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her. I hallucinated from lack of sleep. It felt like I’d been tricked into this. Everyone who wanted me to have a child — my husband, my family — knew they weren’t going to lose much, while my freedom and identity went down the toilet.”* Had a history of depression and anxiety* Turned down a job offer that would require moving because they didn’t want to change their daughter’s preschool* Worries a LOT about her daughter (i.e. what would happen if I were not here and something happened?)27-year-old North Carolina mother of a 1-year-old* Didn’t want kids* “My husband and I met in middle school. He was always interested in having a big family, and I told him I wasn’t quite sure.”* Has a history of depression and is now dealing with it in her son perhaps:* “My son has a low tolerance for frustration and doesn’t communicate other than whining, screaming, crying, throwing things, and pulling my hair.”* Has body dysmorphia issues* “During pregnancy, I felt embarrassed. I’ve had body-dysmorphia issues since I was a kid, and I felt so massive. I used to be a track athlete and have always been fit and active, so I didn’t like feeling so heavy and restricted when trying to do the things I’ve always done, like hiking. During my third trimester, I didn’t want to leave the house so that people wouldn’t see me.”* Different contextualization would have made a huge difference re: body dysmorphia* Horrible birth experience* “My son’s birth was also traumatic. His shoulder got stuck in my pelvis and the epidural kept wearing off; the nurses told me it was fine, that I was overthinking. They held me down and jumped on my pelvis to dislodge his shoulder while the doctor reached up and got him out; I still have pain from it. When my son was placed on me, I didn’t feel anything. It was surreal. I told the nurse, “You’ve got to put him back in the bassinet, I’m about to puke.” Then I did, all over myself. No one helped me to the bathroom or showed me how to wash myself.”* Felt erased as a human being* “I felt like I’d disappeared as a human being. Clients called me “Mama.” Friends and family asked me how my son was; they told me how excited and overjoyed I must be. I tried telling them I wasn’t coping well with motherhood and was still processing the birth, and they’d tell me, “That’s what motherhood is.” One of my friends texted my husband, “Wow, she’s changed, and not in a good way.” It came from a place of care — she and many friends and family told me I had postpartum depression, to seek therapy and go on medication. But at the same time, they’d quickly flip it back to, “You need to be there for your son. Pick yourself up by your bootstraps. Move on; it’s over with and done.” Everything I went through, was just like, No big deal, because the baby is here. Your existence doesn’t matter.”* Withdrew from fellow parents because her son is developmentally delayed* “I stopped talking to my friends with kids. They wanted to exchange baby photos and milestones and, while I was happy for them, my son is delayed and is in early intervention services, so he wasn’t meeting his.”* Plans to leave her husband and son* “My husband and I are taking steps to separate, and he’s willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. But I can’t live this life with him anymore. I’m not the parent my son needs.”Simone & Malcolm Collins react to the viral New York Times / The Cut article “I Regret Having Children” — three anonymous mothers share raw, dark stories of resentment, isolation, postpartum struggles, and lost identity.Instead of the usual outrage, we treat this as an important warning and planning document. We break down why these regrets happen, how strong reasons for having kids + radical honesty + contingency planning can prevent them, the power of contextualization, genetic self-awareness, partner compatibility, and why the early toddler years are brutal but temporary.We also discuss:* Why hating yourself or your partner makes parenting hell* Polygenic selection & mental health* The importance of realistic expectations around birth, sleep, and infant care* How to build a “parenting contract” before kids* Feminism’s impact on women’s identity in motherhoodA must-watch for anyone considering children or already navigating early parenthood. Brutally honest, optimistic, and solution-focused.Episode TranscriptSimone Collins: [00:00:00] hello Malcolm. I’m excited to be speaking with you today because we are gonna be talking about a New York Times article published in the Cut called I Regret Having Children Telling the very dramatic Stories of three mothers who genuinely regret becoming mothers and have these dark and very ominous tales.And most of the conservative commentators I’ve seen covering it, and basically I feel like I’m seeing this everywhere online. So we have to talk about it.Malcolm Collins: No, what I love about this is so many people, they’re like, oh, Malcolm and Simone, think about how it’s gonna affect your kids. That it is really publicly documented that you really wanted to have them and, and love them.I’m like, what, what, what about these people’s kids? Like this is part of the, the historical,Simone Collins: well, it’s anonymous. So the idea is that hopefully these children will never see it. And even the mothers have said this, like they wouldn’t want their children to know how much they resent this. But most of the people who are talking about it are saying This is, wait, oneMalcolm Collins: of you?Simone Collins: Hmm?Malcolm Collins: Was one of ‘em, you.Simone Collins: No, no, actually. But a lot of the people are saying, this is [00:01:00] Antinatalists and this is terrible. Or like Brett Cooper thinks that the, the discourse is really about unsupported isolated mothers and bad matching in marriage and not really about mothers hitting their kids.Whereas I think really everyone’s missing the point. And here’s the thing, I actually think this article is. Fantastic. And that the, the accounts that these mothers give are actually really important. And that anyone who is really serious about kids should read these and read a lot more. And, and here’s why.Basically the, the best way to get through the tough parts of having kids and having kids isn’t necessarily easy, is to have a strong reason for having kids. And also know ahead of time everything is gonna go wrong. And you and I did exactly this. But not with kids with getting married, remember we went instead of on like regretful parenting subreddit, we went on the relationship subreddit and we very miss fastidiously cataloged everything that could possibly go long wrong with our relationship.And we built plans, contingency plans around thoseMalcolm Collins: things and, and documents. But the thing is, is this is different because the people [00:02:00] don’t know what their kids are gonna be like. Right?Simone Collins: Oh no, they do. And we’re gonna get into that. No, they super do. And that’s theMalcolm Collins: thing. Oh, you’re right. I mean, genetically our kids are just us.Like, and ISimone Collins: see, and again, in these stories, so we’re gonna go over the stories, but the bigger story here is, no, this is good. We should be talking about this. These problems are real, but they’re also very easy to navigate. In fact. Many of the things that these mothers talk about, these nightmare scenarios are things that, at least on a similar level, we are have as parents experienced.This is not, they’re not like having universally terrible experiences. They’re just going through the rough parts of being early parents. And most of these have kids like, you know, that are still in their toddler years. It’s, it can be rough at times. And the point be talking about this shouldn’tMalcolm Collins: actually difficultSimone Collins: parenting.Malcolm Collins: I have a different reason why I like articles like this. And I do like reading articles like this because youSimone Collins: love the snarkMalcolm Collins: because it’s the same reason I’m like really into like red pill content about how horrible somebody’s girlfriend was to them or something like that. Of course.Simone Collins: Right? ‘Malcolm Collins: cause it just makes me appreciate you more and make you feel like more of a treasure.Simone Collins: Oh, and how, like before you, you’d [00:03:00] love to see what happened to like old classmates on Facebook so that you could be feelMalcolm Collins: superior. Yeah. Just be like, okay. Okay. No. But no, I think a lot of people they think that like, I’m, I’m watching like. Super misogynistic content and it’s gonna make me misogynistic.And it’s like, no, it just makes me appreciate how unique and special you are as a wife. And I think our kids are pretty unique and special too. So hopefully this, this reframes that as well. And I think for a lot of people, when they end up hating their children or being parents, it’s because they don’t really like their partner.They don’t really like themselves becauseSimone Collins: there’s a lot of that in that, in this,Malcolm Collins: by the way, just the mix of the two of you Personality wise. Yeah. Like when I see my kids play it’s just me plus Simone. Like there’s, there’s not a lot of. Exogenous personality in there.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. And I think that’s, that’s one of the really big themes in this actually, that we.Don’t talk about it enough as a society. But the article, it itself opens with parent regret is more common than you might think. The our regretful parents subreddit alone gets around 70,000 weekly visitors who anonymously commiserate [00:04:00] through stigma. Makes it hard to admit it in real life. Below three moms of young children talk about why they wish they could go back to their old lives.And so I’m gonna just pull some. Highlights from each mother who gives their account. And we’re gonna talk about how this, this is stuff that people actually really should be planning around and talking about. And that if you do adequately plan for these things either one, you could just avoid becoming a parent if it’s really not for you.But two, you can really. Make something that could be terrible, totally surmountable by just planning for it because it’s pretty, like the writing was on the wall for most of these issues that these women encountered. And that’s a really big thing. And the most common problem for all of these women is that they lacked a strong reason for having kids.So let’s start with a 34-year-old Rhode Island mother of a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old. First off, she did not have a strong reason for wanting to have kids. She wrote, when my husband and I were dating, his deal breaker was having kids. Totally relatable, right? I didn’t feel the same way, but I [00:05:00] didn’t see life without children as an option.It always felt like the next stage of life for us. I remember telling my husband, I’m worried I love our life now, and I’m not sure what it’s gonna look like with a child. And I think this is, I. One super, super common. I mean, you, we can tell from the polling that women are far more ambivalent around having children than men are men put having a, a, a child and, and, and becoming a parent is one of the top things that they need for a fulfilling life, whereas, mm-hmm.Especially conservative men, whereas progressive men and all women,Malcolm Collins: and it just famous polls recently that showed that conservative men having a kid is the number one thing in terms of life fulfillment and progressive women. It was like the absolute bottom. And that mean, I mean, that culture’s just gonna go extinct, right?Like that’s, that’s what happens when you, which is a weird place to be, where you can see that the cultures that we’re opposing and the people we’re opposing control elite institutions and have power within our society, but they’re. Failure is also inevitable, which makes things feel so weirdly [00:06:00] comforting.Because I, I like being both the underdog in a fight, but I also don’t want the risk of thinking that we could lose.Simone Collins: Yeah. The other really big thing, and I’m so glad you pointed to this, is that if you hate yourself or you hate your partner. You’re gonna have a lot of trouble with your kids. And this also shows up in all three of the stories.So this particular Road Island mother, did you hateMalcolm Collins: adopt?Simone Collins: WhatMalcolm Collins: if you hate yourself? Adopt.Simone Collins: I guess, yeah, if you hate yourself, you are a good candidate for adoption. This particular mother had personal issues that now she is contending within her kids. Like, it’s super obvious. She says she struggled with postpartum depression.She’s a perfectionist. She got diagnosed with a DH ADHD after suspecting her eldest had it. And then, you know, she turns out she had it too. And she wrote, when my younger daughter struggles to get dressed, I try to distract her or make compromises, but in the end she’s screaming and I don’t know how to make it stop.So I just shut down. And so one, yeah, you could adopt two, you could genuinely, like, you could just do polygenic risk score selection like we did and [00:07:00] select for different behavioral traits. You, you can do that. Weird, I mean like risks of behavioral traits. Mm-hmm. But I think more importantly than that actually is, and I have to be careful about how I say this, right?‘cause we’re, we’re not, we’re not big on therapy culture. We’re not big on like working through like your mental health issues, but like, how can I put it? Raising kids has forced me to give myself a lot of grace and forgiveness around, for example, my sensory issues, my autism. And while there’s a world in which I could have seen that in my children and freaked out and everything got way worse instead I see it in my children and it teaches me how to be more forgiving with myself.It also way more understanding of my children. And I think for parents who do things like struggle with depression and frustration and perfectionism like she does, for example, she has chosen. To like have this turn into this vortex of pain and suffering for herself of like, oh, oh, my daughter’s experiencing.‘cause her daughter’s her, like her daughter has her same tendencies ‘cause. They’re, you know,Malcolm Collins: they’re very valid. This is, I wanna [00:08:00] you know, illustrate for the fans what you mean when you say this because it’s something that you, you know, focus on a lot.Simone Collins: UhhuhMalcolm Collins: is you will see some behavior in our kids, like the way they’re picky with food and X way orSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Really into systematizing or, or something else.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And you will reflect on, oh, like I can. More forgiving of myself for those traits.Simone Collins: Yeah,Malcolm Collins: because that was genetic. That wasn’t like a personal failing on my part.Simone Collins: Yeah. Like it helped me, yeah. Hate myself less for that. And I, with this mother, for example, if I were speaking with her in person, I’d be like.I mean, wow. This is, you know, an amazing way to give yourself grace for struggling with these things and just kind of deal with it together. Okay. AndMalcolm Collins: you get, get getting a little,Simone Collins: I know. I, I don’tMalcolm Collins: getting a little therapy as, as they would say in the gamer rooms. You’re getting a little gay here, Simone.I’m gay.Simone Collins: I, it’s a, it’s a, it’s a little fake and gay, but also like it. It’s kind of, it can be beautiful. I’m just saying like, the way you contextualize things really affects how you [00:09:00] can process it. And there’s a world in which this mother would be able to navigate her own struggles with perfectionism and depression as her daughter struggles with them in a way where they can both navigate it better.And there’s also a world in which it’s worse. But anyway the other, the other part is again, she has a 6-year-old and a 3-year-old, like especially three year olds are really, really difficultMalcolm Collins: to point fun, start.Simone Collins: So because she has a really young kid, it’s also just gonna suck. And the problem is, I mean, after both her kids are over six years old, things are gonna go get a lot easier.And I think it’s really unfair for and this is where I think it’s unfair with the media and also probably our regretful parenting is riddled with parents who have. Toddlers and probably doesn’t bring a lot of older kids.Malcolm Collins: Well, and I’m taking it back. I mean, imagine how much that must make you dislike your kids to be constantly in an environment like a Facebook group or, or regretful parenting where this hatred is being boast rewarded and re.Forced by the community you have chosen to surround yourself with. Yeah. If the water cooler talk every day is how much you hate your kids, you’re going to begin to hate [00:10:00] your kids more and more. The same thing happens with partners. If you surround yourself with a community, that’s poor conversation point is how much you don’t like your partners, or even you get social credit for challenging yourself or for being the beleaguered mother, then you’re going to project that more.But let’s get to what the actual article says.Simone Collins: Okay, we’ll move on to the, I I just wanna point out though, like you, you’re missing my point that when you actually look at these parents and being like, oh my God, I’m not happy, and that’s bad one. It’s a very short term period where on average parents, especially women, are less happy.And that’s specifically when they, they have really young children and it passes. And it sh it should be just better understood that this isn’t a period that’s like necessarily full of joy. Okay, so moving on to the 30-year-old European mother of a 3-year-old. She says that she grew up sheltered with a stay-at-home mom.She married at 22. Her mother said that she’d help out with a new baby which turned out to not be so true. She felt like she was [00:11:00] one. She had a terrible pregnancy and delivery experience. She was constrained to bedrest in her first trimester. She had a horrible recovery from birth. Like it was painful to move.There was something like an incision made that was just. Incredibly painful.Malcolm Collins: Everybody who’s had a number of kids always has a few bad pregnancy stories. I think when people are like, I stopped having kids because of a bad pregnancy then you were never gonna be in a sustainable population. If, if that was what prevented you from having kids.You’ve had really terrible pregnancies in the past.Simone Collins: Yeah. And again, it comes down to contextualization. She, I think, experiences this in an isolated way where people were kind of gaslighting her into like, everything’s gonna be great. Everything’s wonderful. It’s all magical. And the worst thing for her, and this is one of those things where had she looked at everything could, that it could go wrong and actually looked at regretful parenting before she had her baby.She could have basically headed this off. But she was in a situation where both her mother and her husband didn’t help that much. She wrote, my husband had a month and a half of paternity leave, but the only helpful thing he did during that time was change her diapers, [00:12:00] though he did it with a reluctant expression on his face.I had the feeling he never, never believed how much pain I was in. My mom helped, but she didn’t like being disturbed at night and even during the day was afraid of holding the baby or changing her. I hallucinated from lack of sleep. It felt like I’d been tricked into this. Everyone who wanted me to have a child, my husband, my family knew they weren’t going to lose much while my freedom and my identity went down the toilet.And that’s something that she could have if they’d all discussed it, anticipated and had off. Like I think it’s horrible what happened to her. And it didn’t have to do that. No, IMalcolm Collins: mean, I think that’s an an I’m, I’m gonna be honest we tried to do for the younger years with kids do more gender equal breakdown in terms of care, and it just doesn’t work very well.It ends up being so contrived the way you do the split care for the infant. Yeah. It like. Infants really was in our house. The infant is always Simone’s like total responsibility. And I’m in charge of the fallback for anyone over that age, and that works really well. But if you’re just going into [00:13:00] this and you just have one kid and you’re in that infant stage when the mom bears and it is hard, I mean.You’ve gotta remember guys, if you’re watching this, what it’s like to be a new mother you are in enormous pain often because you just underwent some form of surgery or something like that. The kid could die at any moment because kids of that age do die. Just die randomly.Simone Collins: It’s horrifying. Yeah.Especially your first time parent and you, you don’t necessarily, I mean, if you didn’t grow up with very young siblings, you also have no idea what you’re doing and you’re like, oh my God, this is the human and I feel like I’m gonna kill this human.Malcolm Collins: You’re not sleeping like at all up, all. Night and day. Yeah, if you are breastfeeding, that is very painful.Simone Collins: It can be for some people they just love it, but for a lot of people it’s not the best.Malcolm Collins: I,Simone Collins: I hate it.Malcolm Collins: So, so the, the, the, you know, you are in both constant pain, but also your brain is hypersensitized to the needs of the baby.I can see in Simone’s face how distressed she gets. When we have the infants, I think the reason why you don’t contextualize all [00:14:00] this, this as horrible as she is contextualizing it, is one, you know that your sacrifice is appreciated which is really important for guys to make sure that you are signaling that, that you understand and it is appreciated.Yeah,Simone Collins: and that’s the thing she pointed out, right, that like her husband didn’t seem to really believe her, that it was likeMalcolm Collins: toughSimone Collins: for her.Malcolm Collins: And two, you see the outcome. In the, the older children, like when I, I see my kids, I hug my kids, my kids jump on me. I see how awesome this, what to me is honestly a very boring stage of life.The infants I’ve, I’ve, I’ve been, I do not like infants. It’s zeroSimone Collins: interest.Malcolm Collins: But I love, love toddlers.Simone Collins: Like, but I mean, parents should talk about that because I think that that also. Some women may grow up exposed to what I call like baby men who just like, there’s five to 10% of men just seem to be baby crazy.Like they absolutely beloved babies. I wanna hold the baby, they’re the baby whisperers. And then every other man, like zero interest like they, I. You know, like they’d rather hold a wet stray [00:15:00] dog covered in trash.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: YouMalcolm Collins: know, babies disgust, I’m not a fan of babies. Yeah. And on newspapers. When, when I first said that, as you said, you know, we need to normalize it.You can feel like, I’m not a big fan of babies, but I it’s worth it for when they’re toddlers newspapers. When that went viral for me saying that, they’re like, oh, he doesn’t even like his children. He doesn’t even, you know, like being around them or enjoy parenting. Mm-hmm. And I’m like, what a sick reason to have kids because you’re going to enjoy it.Right? Like this isn’tSimone Collins: well, but also again, it, women need to be aware of this. Like women shouldn’t be gaslit about like.Malcolm Collins: Oh yeah.Simone Collins: Oh, you know, like your, your husband’s gonna be in love. And also like, keep in mind the, the men who are referenced in by these women in this article typically were like, yeah, I really wanna have kids.Like, kids are a must for me. Like they act like they really wanna have kids, but then they’re not into kids below three years. Like, that’s actually super normal. And that doesn’t mean they don’t wanna have kids that actually they’re probably gonna be great dads.Malcolm Collins: Is this me with the dog and, and chickens.Simone Collins: The dog and chick. Oh, you,Malcolm Collins: you, you always, youSimone Collins: Right. [00:16:00] Malcolm has been the one who’s pulled the trigger ultimately on us getting a bunch of pets. And then who ends up being the only person who takes care of the pet, who feeds the pet, goes out.Malcolm Collins: I’m sorry, Simone. I will endeavor to lighten your load there where I can Yeah,Simone Collins: sure.It’s been how many years now? Okay.Malcolm Collins: It is, it is appreciated though, Simon phone and I’m just, I’m just airing that so that you know, that I, I know that you likely feel similar to them just in other domains of our life.Simone Collins: No. Well, no, but also like you’re not into babies, like you don’t. Have you’ve changed, I guess when you, you, you did, you did take texts to the diaper, so you’ve changed his Sorry.To the doctor. So you’ve changed his diaper then, but you don’t, you have not Once,Malcolm Collins: when we started with kid number one, we shared bi diaper changing, but we stopped doing that pretty soon after kid. WeSimone Collins: just dropped it. Yeah. Like, because it didn’t make sense, but it’s, I just, I, I, I think it’s great that this is being discussed because it should be discussed because.[00:17:00]If you, here’s the thing. So we had on the podcast at one point, the author of Hannah’s children, Dr. Katherine Ruth Balak, she interviewed academically and then published a book on college educated mothers of five plus children.Malcolm Collins: Okay?Simone Collins: And she told us that the top factor, determining whether or not someone was like, oh my God, I am all in this.I wanna have so many kids, was whether or not they had a good experience with their first kid. And if they felt, you know, well supported and it was, you know, what they wanted and they had a great experience, they were way more likely to wanna have a lot of kids, even if like they came into it being like, I really like keep, I will, I mean, you didn’t read the book, but many of the mothers who or interviewed in the book had similar starting points to these three women.Who regret becoming parents were like, I don’t know. Like,Malcolm Collins: okay, let’s, let’s get to the next one.Simone Collins: But my point is though, that like if you come into it the right way, you know, if you come in prepared, you can be super into it. So, anyways, so she had this terrible [00:18:00] experience. Her husband, mother didn’t help much, but another common thread here, she had a history of depression and anxiety.And I think, again, if you’ve got a lot of mental health problems, especially as a woman. I, I do think that you need to plan extra for that. Well, thisMalcolm Collins: is I think one of the biggest arguments for polygenic selection Yeah. Is a lot of people who have major depressive disorders or anxiety disorders these are the things that I have heard the technology being used for the most.Yeah. Is ensuring that they do not pass major depression onto your kids. Yeah. People. Are out there imagining that it’s gonna be people like us selecting against autism or something. We’re like, no, we don’t select against autism. Like, or, or selecting against you know, some sort of like ethnicity or something.And it’s like, no, it’s people who have gone through some sort of major psychological challenge in their own life who do not want to bring kids. To undergo because depression isn’t like a cool, like, nobody’s like, oh, they’re, they’re trying to genocide depress people. Everyone who’s actually undergone like depression or anxiety or [00:19:00] something like that understands why you may not want your kids like, like that is an uncontroversial thing to not want to pass that down.Simone Collins: Well, and, and here’s the really tough thing is, is, is it’s one thing to deal with ongoing, like with postpartum depression and then with the anxiety of being a new parent like that, that you can kind of anticipate if that’s. Already your tendency, it’s gonna happen to you as a new parent, especially ‘cause you’re under all this additional stress.Yeah. Also dealing with that in your kid, like having it magnified in that way is really rough and like Yeah, they’re depressed. And you’re depressed. Yeah. Super ready for that. Or you need to. You know, like do yeah. Try to reduce the odds of it happening in the first place. Something like polygenic risk or selection.Malcolm Collins: But actually this is interesting because you have traits that people could contextualize negatively. Well, it’s not depression. You need an incredibly controlled environment or you become very stressed about things. Yeah. And that can be seen in the setup of our house and the way that we make decisions.Simone Collins: Everything. But it’s also, it’s, it’s something that so cool. I’ve been able to, adapt with our children.Malcolm Collins: Yeah.Simone Collins: So one, I don’t think it’s maladaptive for a modern society, like actually it’s much, [00:20:00] it’s much easier for people like me to get by, so I don’t think it’s, it’s like a, a bad thing to bring children in with those traits.But like, it makes me as a parent really, you know, I, I’m able to anticipate that in them and accommodate it. I take custom orders for everyone’s dinner every night, like everyone gets to do a lot of things in their own special, unique way that they have to do them, because I know that that’s how they need it to be.And they’ll be happy as long as that’s the case, and they are like, it’s good.Malcolm Collins: Yeah,Simone Collins: so number three, woman number three. She’s a 27-year-old in North Carolina, and she’s a mother of a 1-year-old, and she’s the most dark ending. SheMalcolm Collins: don’t start there when you’re talking about kids. Come on.Simone Collins: Oh, well, okay.Yeah. And not, not, not Simone trigger dark meaning that like your child is getting hurt. It’s actually the, the outcome is best for the children, but is still pretty dark for the child. She didn’t want kids. She wrote, my husband and I met in middle school. He was always interested in having a big family, and I told him, I wasn’t quite sure.So already kind of a warning sign. Like, really, if, if you’re not into it, you know, it’s, it’s, you should get through that first. Before you, [00:21:00] you weren’tMalcolm Collins: into it either, and now you’re superSimone Collins: No, but you, you convinced me. And I was like, yeah, I’m all in. Based on the conditions. And that was it. We were all set.I was 100% bought in. What happened to her though was she got a positive pregnancy test and she’s like, well, I guess I’m doing this. Her, her husband was like, I, I really, really, really want you to keep the baby. Like, I think she was even thinking about having. An abortion. Okay. She has a history like the others of depression and is now dealing, probably dealing with in her son, she wrote, my son has a low tolerance for frustration and doesn’t communicate other than whining, screaming, crying, throwing things, and pulling my hair.So again, like this is one of those things just to highlightMalcolm Collins: that it’s how you contextualize it. But I mean, I guess you could say like, Octavian constantly climbing on me and hitting me and everything like that is like this horrible thing.Simone Collins: Well, but you contextualize it positively. And there’s an even better example with her in contextualization because she has.She has body dysmorphia issues she wrote during pregnancy. I felt embarrassed. I’ve had body dysmorphia issues since I was a kid. I, and I felt so massive. I used to be a [00:22:00] track athlete and have always been fit and active, so I didn’t like feeling so heavy and restricted when trying to do the things I’ve always done, like hiking.During my third trimester, I didn’t wanna leave the house so that people wouldn’t see me. So she, like, I also have body dysmorphia. I hate the way I’ve looked. I, I’ve always. Hated my body, but like the way I contextualize pregnancy is like, well, all right, I am stuck in this body. I’m resentful of it. I’m going to like wear this thing into the ground.Like it is the ultimate revenge of like, all right, well, we’re just gonna. Where like, you know, use it the full capacity until I literally break it until I break my uterus, until I break everything. Which is ultimately more satisfying for me than like getting a hysterectomy, which is the first thing I thought about doing before I met you.And so there are ways to deal with these things. You, you could have body dysmorphia and respond like she did, or you could have body dysmorphia and respond like I did. And they’re both ways you can deal with it, but I think we’re having a lot more fun with my method. So I’m just saying like, contextualization is everything.She also had a horrible birth experience. I’m not gonna, I don’t have to [00:23:00] describe it too. I can, I can read it, but like, I also have had horrible birth experiences and it sucks and I think that it.Malcolm Collins: Well, you one I would say was all of this. You don’t know. Some people just contextualize everything horribly.Like,Simone Collins: yeah, yeah.Malcolm Collins: You, you know, whatever their experience is, it’s going to be a horrible experience because they have learnedSimone Collins: based on like, so her, her she had an epidural, but like it kept not working. I, I also, I didn’t have an epidural and I, I was bad. Anyway,Malcolm Collins: continueSimone Collins: with theMalcolm Collins: story,Simone Collins: but they, they had to like.Jump on her hip to make, dislodge him from like a place where he was stuck before he entered the birth canal or something. And she still felt pain from that. So it was, it was bad. It was like genuinely bad. It wasn’t just her whining about it. Malcolm.Malcolm Collins: Okay, continue.Simone Collins: But yeah, she also, more importantly for her is she felt erased as a human being.She wrote, I felt like I disappeared as a human being, clients. Called me mama. Friends and family asked me how my son was. They told me how excited and overjoyed I must be. I tried telling them I wasn’t coping well with motherhood and was still [00:24:00] processing the birth, and they tell me that’s what motherhood is.One of my friends texted my husband, wow, she’s changed and not in a good way. It came from a place of care. She and many friends and family told me I had postpartum depression to seek therapy and to go on medication, but at the same time, they’d quickly flip it back to, you need to be there for your son.Pick yourself up by move on. It’s over with and done. Everything you went through is just like no big deal because the baby’s here. Your existence doesn’t matter. And again, that’s contextualization. And I think that one of the most toxic things about our modern society, and I I do think this has to do more with culture than it does with like preparing, is that the more you focus in on yourself and get into your head, the more miserable you’re gonna be.So even if you wanna optimize for hedonic pleasure. Doing what she’s doing is kind of like an exercise in frustration and suffering. And I mean, if, if she’s such a miserable person, the idea that she would want to identify more with herself to me is so odd. You know, like you could just become more expansive and identify with [00:25:00] your family and enjoy the joys of a child, which is soMalcolm Collins: interesting.I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s.You are supposed to stop being the point of your life. Yeah. Your kids are the point of your life, right? Like the, the focus shifts. And for somebody who adopted the urban monoculture, that can be horrifying because they’re taught in this sort of atomized self being the most important thing. And this idea that you would sublimate that either in a marriage or through children is one of the most mortifying things they can imagine.And yet we had already, I mean, when we got married. There was a period where we stayed more atomized at the beginning. I, I think you were really afraid of this idea of No, we’re just one person now.Simone Collins: Yeah. I was much more hesitant around it than you were. I, I think also though, because women. One, lose more just traditionally than men do, like physically logistically, especially in the younger years, like to your point, [00:26:00] right, like I’m doing most of the infant care, your life changes the least as we get new infant.So women, women do feel like they have more to lose, especially in the early years, and they do. But also they’ve been uniquely conditioned to be like, no, don’t ever give those things up. It’s a bad thing if you give those things up. Whereas men. Have never really been told that.Malcolm Collins: Actually, hold on, this could be like a whole other episode, but you could almost argue that feminism conceptually was fighting against.The, the woman’s role as a mother that societal framing of a woman’s position like we, and, and, and you see the people who have fully adopted feminist framing, you even suggest, well, that’s a woman’s role, and they freak out. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah.Well, and you can also argue, which I think is interesting, is that.Women are so concerned about losing their identity, but men never had them. Like, men don’t really get to be full men until they have their families and identify as their families, which is so weird. Whereas, like for women, they feel like they lose everything by getting their family, which is I think, a really interesting piece of tension and [00:27:00] interplay that you get with relationships.It’s not, it’s not what I would expect. But I, I, yeah. Now that, that’s kind of, that’s kind of occurring to me that like men, men aren’t losing. Men. Men don’t even get to be anything like an incel is nothing, they don’t have an identity. They, they mean nothing in society. That’sMalcolm Collins: actually a really interesting point.Yeah. Men do not matter until they’re married and, and then really until they have kids. Yeah. From a societalSimone Collins: perspective and then sort of women kind of cease to, cease to, well, yeah. I don’t know, like, not that they cease to matter, but they kind of recede into it and they feel like they’re losing something, whereas men.Feel like they’re finally getting their identity. It, it’s a very weird thing.Malcolm Collins: There’s a Well, and this is seeing that the, that the mother is lesser in the eyes of the urban monocultureSimone Collins: uhhuh. Oh yeah. No, you, you definitely take a downgrade, aMalcolm Collins: singleSimone Collins: woman.Malcolm Collins: That’s the, the, the, we’ve read other articles as women, like identifying as single, even when they’re in a relationship because it’s seen as cooler or something.Simone Collins: Yeah. Or identifying as a divorcee just to beMalcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah. Even after she was remarried, [00:28:00] she still identified primarily as a divorcee.Simone Collins: Yeah. My, my cache is in rejecting marriage actually. Speaking of which so she. A after withdrawing from fellow parents. ‘cause she just hated so much people identifying with their children.Decided to leave her husband and actually her son too. She wrote, my husband and I are taking steps to separate and he’s willing to take on the role of a single parent, which makes me feel incredibly guilty. But I can’t live this life with him anymore. I’m not the parent my son needs. And I, one, I think it’s kind of based, like she actually isn’t the parent of her son.She, she seems to really hate it. And that would be not good for a kid to grow up around.Malcolm Collins: She’s not the person anyone needs. She seems.Simone Collins: Yeah. Yeah. No, she, she, she seems genuinely, she, she needs to work on a lot of things and, and I don’t think she can do that with her husband and her son. Also, like single dads statistically do really well.So I’m not worried for the kid and I’m not worried for the husband. And, and I didn’t read these parts, but the husband was also incredibly gung-ho about this kid really wanted to be a dad. He’s super on board with being a single parent, so. But it’s still a [00:29:00] very dark ending, right? This is a woman who rejected parenting so much that she’s literally just going to end it.She’s not gonna be,Malcolm Collins: I would say that kids. More broadly, and I, I really cannot make this point loudly enough, is I don’t know what this kid is like, but like there are bad kids out there, right? Like, there are unpleasant kids. I’ve seen our kids, I’ve, I’ve seen our kids interact with ‘em. We, we have other kids who I, I’ve, I’ve like, oh my God, if that was my kid, I’d like smother them in their sleep.Like they, they’re a, a net. Burden to society And I maybe,Simone Collins: well, I, so you put it that way, but like in act, and so what this mother complained about was her son was not meeting the same developmental milestones that her peers children were and that he was in early intervention. Our kids have been in early intervention, our kids have been diagnosed with autism.Our kids have gone through pretty extensive therapy. Like at first we were made to feel a lot of shame about that by some people in our. Family and stuff, but thenMalcolm Collins: Oh, no. And the wider,Simone Collins: like, we ultimately realized like, oh no, you’re just messed up like we are. And like [00:30:00] we all get along really well here.So I think, I don’t know.Malcolm Collins: But what’s interesting to me as well is, and I think you make this point well, the things that she complains about are all things I notice in our kids and, and love. I love the way that they’re vitalistic and crawl all over me and fight me andSimone Collins: don’t, yeah. And like we’re, we’reMalcolm Collins: don’tSimone Collins: always about our kids not meeting the developmental milestones ofMalcolm Collins: like, when I’ve seen kids and I was just like.Like the, the kids that have given me that, it, it’s interesting, they’ve always been like either like genetically obsequious you know, like very needy attention, wanting clearly like unsure of themselves. It’s interesting that to me that would be like such a trigger in seeing a kid who’s unsure of themselves and being like, Ugh, disgusting.Or they, they, areSimone Collins: timid and afraid. You can’t, timidMalcolm Collins: and afraidSimone Collins: children that are timid and afraid.Malcolm Collins: And that’s like a big ick factor for me. And it’s interesting that I like, have kid icks like that. I’ve like,Simone Collins: God,Malcolm Collins: I now know what women mean when they say this. Right. You know, I’m like, Ugh.Like that Is [00:31:00] that, that, that’s cringey to be around that. But our kids just don’t have any of that. And I don’t know how I’d feel if we ever had a kid who was like that. But I, I also don’t know how. You and I could produce a kid like that.Simone Collins: Yeah, it’s, it’s unlikely. But I mean, you and I talk about this a lot and I don’t know how much we’ve talked about it on our podcast we have a little bit, but like.If you do not like your partner or you do not like things about your partner, you’re gonna really struggle with your kids. ‘cause those kids are gonna exhibit those behaviors. It’s gonna be really tough for you. Whereas if you love your partner, you’re gonna be crazy about your kids, at least if you are also a forgiving of your yourself.And I think where I struggle most of our kids at times is when they exhibit behaviors that that. Bother me about myself, and I see that in them and I’m like, oh no. But, but then seeing you show grace around that, I feel like you’re showing me grace and it’s just all over again. You show me how much you love me andMalcolm Collins: I feel there’s the other weird thing that I’ve, I talked to Simone about when I see her being a really loving mom to our kids, [00:32:00] and she is, she’s a phenomenal mother. Like when I go down on a weekend, ‘cause she gets the kids first on weekends and she has, you know, made them all like individual dishes and, and music’s playing and the kids are all roughhousing around and she’s, you know, reading them a book or something and she’s doing all these nice things for them and she does these things for them.At least she tells me because, you know, she. Likes the kids, but somehow my brain doesn’t register it as that. My brain, every time I see her being nice to the kids is seeing her going out of her way to do me a favor.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, the, the kids are just like, I mean, not to sound spiritual or like emotional, but like the kids are fragments of our souls and they’re, they’re definitely little pocket Malcolms.I see so much of them in you that Yeah, I mean, if, if you love your partner, you’re gonna love your kids. And that’s, I mean, you can see this with, with these parents. I think that these mothers who really re regret becoming parents, I think are really also struggling with not just themselves. It’s clear that they have self hatred [00:33:00] issues or depression or anxiety or all of those things.But then they’re also really struggling with your husband. And like, imagine what a nightmare that is. If you hate yourself, if you don’t like your husband either, and now you’re alone with like a version of the two of you magnified and also pooping and you know, totally out of control like that. That sounds.Yeah. Like a complete nightmare. AndMalcolm Collins: well, I also think another thing that’s that, that we’ve, we’ve skirted on here, but I think it’s really important to drill intoSimone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: Is the role of contextualization in all of this.Simone Collins: Yes, that’sMalcolm Collins: right. You know, we had reporters here today asking me about like when people were.Dog piling us online for using corporal punishment with our kids and saying that we’re child abusers and everything like that. And like asking me like, do you feel? And I was like, no, I don’t really feel bad about that. Like, I can choose how I can textualize these things that happen in my life. And when I was in that debate with Steven meu and he kept trying to get me to be like, well, look at these things your parents did.Like you should reject them and condemn them. And I was like, I like who I am as an adult. I’m not gonna condemn them. Like, it’s fine. Right?Simone Collins: Yeah. The outcome was good. So,Malcolm Collins: yeah. And I, I, [00:34:00] I realized that. Like at a pathological level, if you look at me and, and my outlook on life, I just choose not to contextualize things negatively, right?Mm-hmm. And I, ‘cause I don’t see any purpose in it, right? Like, it doesn’t help me. Yeah. And society will reward you for contextualizing things negative because everybody wants a sob story. But if you can, you know, internally was in your family culture, steal yourself against that. You will just be like way happier with your life and way more productive.And this is and I think for a lot of these people, it’s just a choice of negative contextualization, right? Yeah. Of things that happened to me and you and I contextual. And I never have, like, I never like made some deal with you around that you have to do this, but it seems like you have organically adopted this as well.WeSimone Collins: organically did it. But what do you think about the idea of. Like we did with our relationship also doing stuff like this with parenting because it does seem to [00:35:00] be a really big deal breaker in life in. In a relationship that, that people do. I mean, we, we did some things like what will we do if our kids ask for porn?What will we do if our kids misbehave? What religion will we make? But we didn’t do it about parenting, logistics.Malcolm Collins: The idea of parenting choices in a parenting contract.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm.Malcolm Collins: Being something you create before having kids is a failure.Simone Collins: Really, I like the idea a failure.Malcolm Collins: SoSimone Collins: why?Malcolm Collins: Everything that would be in a parenting contract should be in the outset of the relationship, the relationship contract.You should. Okay,Simone Collins: that’s fair. But like, instead of just looking at how relationships fail, also look it up. Parenting fails.Malcolm Collins: Exactly. That’sSimone Collins: okay. Okay. Okay. So we are on the same page. I was like, what are you talking about?Malcolm Collins: And we had done all of that with our relationship contract.Simone Collins: No, not all. No. What I’m saying is all we did actually was.Religion, porn and punishment. And like where we spend family holidays, we didn’t do, those areMalcolm Collins: core things [00:36:00] parentingSimone Collins: wise. Yeah. Those are core things that relationships end over. But what we, we didn’t do was like, you know, how are we gonna handle infants? What’s gonna happen? You know, if I’m really injured in like pregnancy, what’s, what’s gonna happen?Like. With you know, who’s gonna do overnights, et cetera, like, what’s gonna happen. Now, we did have an agreement on like, what’s gonna happen if, if one person has to be a stay-at-home parent and it was gonna be you. But like, I don’t know. I, I feel like we could have done more. I just, I want, my thing is I, again, I think this article’s good.I think people should be aware of what can go wrong, and I think people should plan for it as they’re beginning the outset of a relationship. Do you agree?Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Well, it needs to be agreed at the outset of a relationship because the kids are ultimately the purpose of human relationships, sexual relationships, romantic relationships.Simone Collins: Well, I mean, per our view, people are welcome to have different objective functions and decide to only do pairings based onMalcolm Collins: No, no, no, no. Biologically, I’m speaking here.Simone Collins: Oh, biologically. Yeah. ThatMalcolm Collins: is, that is why the [00:37:00] concept of a relationship evolved. That is why the institution of marriage evolved. That is why the institution of dating evolved.It was to produce the next generation. It has been co-opted as a l rrp by, by other groups. But it is fundamentally that’s what it’s about. Right? Yeah. Now obviously you know, now you can be like, well, does this mean that like. Gay people aren’t really in a relationship. It’s like, well actually that could change as science changes, right?Like yeah. If, if, if they can you know, artificial wombs and have kids on their own. Yeah. Then even for them, right? If a faction of like, let’s say gay culture survives by making itself above repopulation rate was most of the cultures that are above repopulation rate being very you know, homophobic, transphobic, et cetera but if some faction of, of, of a gay culture finds out how to make it.Self stable through science from the perspective of that faction of gay culture? Yeah. Relationships will still be about kids. They’ll still be about forming a stable household to bring the [00:38:00] kids into.Simone Collins: I actually, I think of what I’ve seen of gay parent social media influencers they may actually be in a better position coming into this ‘cause they are approaching parenting from a more.Thoughtful and first principles approach because instead of just being like, oh, I guess we’re just gonna default to like the gender norms or whatever.Malcolm Collins: Well, and you know, huge bonus they don’t have to be married to a woman.Simone Collins: Yeah, but also like if it’s two women they, they still, you know,Malcolm Collins: okay, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll put it this way, of the gay parenting influencers.Yeah. I see a lot of wholesome male, male partners. I do not see many wholesome female, female, gay parenting influencers.Simone Collins: There’s there’s one that I watch a lot. They just had a, well, not just, but they recently had twins after having one boy and they talk about it a lot. She’s, she’s I mean like both of them show up on the podcast, but she does a lot of like, just cultural commentary.I can’t remember her name now, but she’s a, a disabled ginger vintage fashion wearing. Woman whose, whose [00:39:00] look I love, I love her look. AndMalcolm Collins: I’m disabled.Simone Collins: She talks a lot about her disability. Other, I wouldn’t say that if it weren’t like part of her identity. ‘cause otherwise that would seem like I’m, I don’t know, trying to shame her orMalcolm Collins: a weird thing to talk about, you know?Simone Collins: Yeah. But no, she, she grew up with like crippling pain issues and, and like, I think she’s partially deaf perhaps, or something like that. But then, yeah, she’s a, just always think of that Everest news clip to the top of Everest. But he’s gay. I mean, he’s gay. I mean, he’s blind.Speaker: Right after the break, we’re gonna interview Eric Weihenmayer, who climbed the highest mountain in the world, Mount Everest. But he’s gay. I mean, he’s gay... Excuse me, he’s blind. So we’ll hear about that coming up. Okay. As we head to the break, a look at the s-Simone Collins: She’s both, she’s both deaf and gay.So maybe she just needs to climb Everest and finally fulfill the prophecy. But anyway, theMalcolm Collins: most disabled person to ever do a thing. But so you think that they, they, that she comes across as like wholesome.Simone Collins: Very, no, no, no. Like [00:40:00] they’re, I mean, tired as being a parent of, of twins, but like, that’s kind of normal when you have like young twins and everything and like, they had a complicated pregnancy and everything and they shared a lot about it openly.And I like, I like that people do that. But yeah, they’ve, they’ve I think very intentionally thought through, you know, how they’re gonna balance things and how they’re gonna manage. And I like that. So, you know, that’s the, the great thing about. When you the, the problem, and this is something we talk a lot about in the practice guide to relationships, is that when people don’t explicitly negotiate terms in a relationship, each person is going off a social contract.Now that makes sense if you grow up in some medieval fiefdom where everyone has lived with the same culture in isolation for hundreds of years. But when you live in our culture and everyone is dealing with a slightly different tat. Social contract, you, you’ll get into a marriage and like one person expects like one set of things and the other person expects a totally different set of things.And then it’s this huge shock when you’re not on the same page.Malcolm Collins: What, what I find so funny is you know, I, I have to choose my words because there’s different factions in [00:41:00] our audience. And the ways the different factions relate to ideal marriage set setups. Like there’s a huge chunk of like the online right, where when we’re talking about like a single father raising a kid, they’re like, that’s awesome.That’s the only way to raise kids, and it can be a greatSimone Collins: way to raise kids.Malcolm Collins: Yeah. Yeah.Simone Collins: The faction, like, you could never raise kids without a mother and aMalcolm Collins: father on the, on the men who are doing this, and they’re like, that’s great. And then we’re like in. And now you have the, these male, male partnerships where they’re raising kids.Oh, that’s awesome. And then the other faction is like, no, traditional family’s all the way, you know, the kids need a mother.Simone Collins: Yeah.Malcolm Collins: And we’re just like, whatever. It works like. Well,Simone Collins: I think a big thing, some people have actually asked us to do a podcast on this. There’s the famous Olympic ice skater who is the, daughter one, one of five via IVF to a single Chinese father who chose all like Caucasian Jewish women for the egg donors. And it’s just this very like, very great example of like, a, a a based single dad just being like, yeah, I’m gonna like raise five [00:42:00] children via IVF and they’re all gonna be exceptional and amazing.And he, he has this like Olympic gold medal winner. Who’s like super cool as a person too, by theMalcolm Collins: way. Oh, really? One of his kids became an Olympic gold medal.Simone Collins: Yeah, no, she was like one of the most talked about and famous people in the entire Winter Olympics. I don’t know how you missed this. She’s super cool.Malcolm Collins: Did she fight for China team or America team?Simone Collins: I think she was on China’s team. But yeah. Anyway, IVF. Did dad, Chinese chose Caucasian egg donor, so she’s like mixed.Malcolm Collins: That’s a, that’s a pretty good mix. We did the episode on average racial attractiveness. And Asian White, from the perspective of many ethnicities is the top attractiveness ethnic group.Simone Collins: Yes. With us concluding that the holy grail is Japanese Irish, which many of our viewers have come to agree with,Malcolm Collins: what was it? I, I think it was that white people marked them as even more attractive than other white people and generally groups. Yeah.Simone Collins: And then just anecdotally, like people have sent actually pictures of like their Japanese Irish friends and there’s like [00:43:00] just impossibly, you know, beautiful.So, who knew? But there you go. But yeah. Okay. Well, yeah, anyway, I’m glad the New York Times is, is doing this series and I, I think that, being thoughtful and not sugarcoating things is important. So. There we go. Well, didMalcolm Collins: they, any, any other choice quotes from the article or justSimone Collins: No, just these, these are deeply sad women.It, it’s mostly a very depressing article.Malcolm Collins: Well, I actually think the bigger takeaway is the toxicity of environments like, you know, regretful parents where people are like, oh, these people affirm you, but you shouldn’t be affirmed for wallowing in this stuff. Right? Like, that’s only gonna make things worse for you, even if you’re really experiencing it.Simone Collins: Oh. Although, I don’t know, I, I feel conflicted about that because these women were also surrounded by people who said exactly that and who were like. Man, like stop wallowing, like snap out of it. Like be positive, think about your kids. Like, enjoy the things they enjoy and it just, that didn’t work for them.So as much as I can empathize with your marriage, I also, also, sorry, sorry. With your, with your message. I can’t, it didn’t work [00:44:00] and I like things that work. So. I don’t know what to say to that. Like, I, I, the, and unfortunately I don’t have a solution for women who once they get in this position aside from like, Hey, maybe you can contextualize this a little bit differently.I think the only real solution is to head off these problems before they become problems. Unfortunately, like there’s no saving. The ones who have already come to regret becoming parents is only saving the future parents, which is not convenient, but that’s how I feel. So it goes. Anyway, I love you. I’m gonna make you Bullock tonight with the mozzarella cheese, and if the mozzarella cheese doesn’t look good, we’re doing cheddar instead.Malcolm Collins: The mozzarella cheese will be good. It’s only like a week and a half old.Simone Collins: Look, if there’s mold on mozzarella cheese, because it is a soft cheese, it just goes all the way through. You can’t cut it off. Like you don’t really know where it ends, the veins of those. So it’s not considered safe when it’s a hard cheese, you can cut off the, the mold and you’re, you’re more, it’s like easier to safely do.But I’m not, I’m not doing that. If your mozzarella cheese looks off, I don’t wanna, I don’t wanna kill you weirdly. [00:45:00]Malcolm Collins: Well, you are my wife.Simone Collins: Right? SoMalcolm Collins: it’s one of these things where everyone’s always like, your wife could die having a kid. And I’m like, and that’s, that’s like a big problem for me. ‘cause now I’ve got five in kids that I’m raising alone.Right? Like I would much rather, when I think of one of us dying. Like, that’s the one who got out of the hardship, right? Like that’s the, that’s the if, if I died at any point in the next few years I, I, I feel like I, I, I screwed over Simone, right? Like I got the easy out. She’s got the hard dealing with five kids.Simone Collins: You’re not allowed to die. Look, you just. You’re not allowed to die until we have all of our kids are set up and thriving. Then. Then like we can go whenever we want, but you gotta hold on. Until then, Octavian like rediscovered his mortality. Yesterday as we were driving back from the doctor, he’s like, wait, I’m gonna die.And I’m like, yeah, that’s why you need to be careful with how you spend your time. And he’s like, hold on, wait. Actually, and I’m like, yeah, dude, you’re gonna die. And I’m [00:46:00] like, you’re not res responding. And he is like, whoa,Malcolm Collins: whoa.Simone Collins: It’s, it’s kind of hard for kids to discover that they, they, they don’t re respond because that’s,Malcolm Collins: that’s an interesting thing to discuss with first timeSimone Collins: metaphysically.Like,Malcolm Collins: yeah, you’re eventually gonna die.Simone Collins: Yeah, now, now he’s aware of it that I was like, you’ve got like probably considering modern science like about a hundred years. He’s like, oh, okay, whatever. Like, that’s a lot of time. You know, when like one day for them is eternity. So he’s not too worried about it yet, thank goodness.But he is like, also, I don’t want you to, that’s like, that’s toasty wave saying I love you by the way. You know how he’s always like, I love you and I don’t want you to die. Because they’ve heard me so many times being like, please stop jumping off the bed. Like, please stop doing all these things. I don’t want you to die.And they just think that that’s like this generic way of expressing fondness when I’m really like, no, please stop trying to kill yourself. Like, oh. Anyway, I I love you and I don’t want you to die. [00:47:00] Bye.Malcolm Collins: All right. We gonna join the meetup for fans.Simone Collins: Mm-hmm. I’mMalcolm Collins: looking for, do you have people filming? You still Uhhuh.Okay.Speaker 4: Are we going deep into the jungle, guys? Yeah, are we digging in the jungle? Is this a jungle or woods? This is a wood. It looks jungle. Oh, huh? It looks like it. It looks like it. And that’s called a temperate rainforest, guys. This is a public episode. If you'd like to discuss this with other subscribers or get access to bonus episodes, visit basedcamppodcast.substack.com/subscribe