Episode 4: Jennifer Wallace
The Kids Are Not Alright: Toxic Achievement Culture and Mattering with Jennifer Wallace
Episode 04: Show Notes
Today’s parental landscape is filled with more challenges than ever before. Among many concerns that parents have to deal with every day, we’d never expect that emphasizing achievement could be toxic. But too much of anything is never good, and placing too much attention on our children’s educational success could irreversibly damage their self-esteem.
To help us make sense of this topic, we sat down with Jennifer Wallace, award-winning journalist and author of Never Enough. Jennie explains why the topic of parenting and toxic achievement sits close to her heart, the damaging differences between what parents value and what their children think they value, cognitive biases that many parents are burdened with, and the four questions that every parent should ask themselves to get to the bottom of what they actually prioritize about their kids.
We also discuss the circus act that is the college admissions process, why fit is always better than rankings, the ins and outs of mattering, and rapid-fire topics as taken from the truly challenging yet inspirational new book.
Heart and home are at the center of today’s episode, and we’re thrilled to be sharing it here.
Key Points From This Episode:
Why Jennie decided to deeply examine the topic of parenting and toxic achievement.
Assessing which children are at risk because of toxic achievement, and why.
Detrimental differences between what parents value and what their kids think they value.
The four questions that parents should ask themselves to discover what they truly prioritize.
Scarcity and status: the cognitive biases that plague parents.
The volatile cocktail that is the college admissions process.
Fit over rankings: life fulfillment versus high-performing academic institutions.
How to assess the right fit as you prepare your kids for higher education.
The ins and outs of mattering: for kids, parents, at work, and in life.
Our guest’s advice for how leaders can foster mattering in the workplace.
Get curious not furious, the puppy dog principle, NOFAs, materialism, and mental health.
Quotes:
“I wanted to write a book that really put into context a lot of the fears that parents are feeling. We tend to personalize our fears and anxieties instead of contextualizing them; I wanted to give parents and myself a greater context.” — @JBrehenyWallace [05:42]
“I have yet to meet a parent that did not love their child unconditionally. But what you hear when you ask the students is that that love doesn't always feel unconditional. It can feel like they're loved and they're liked and they're cherished more when they achieve.” — @JBrehenyWallace [09:00]
“Bank on your child, don't bank on the school. That's my motto in my house, that I believe that all three of my children have great strengths that can improve the world. I'm betting on them. I'm not betting on anyone's school to bring them success.” — @JBrehenyWallace [19:07]
“A child's resilience rests fundamentally on the resilience of the adults in their lives.” — @JBrehenyWallace [28:14]
“Our kids are exposed to a lot of materialistic values through social media, through their schools, through their peers. It's a parent’s job at home to really balance the scales and focus on intrinsic values as much as we can, to act as a buffer against the materialistic ones.” — @JBrehenyWallace [41:43]
Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode:
‘Students in high-achieving schools are now named an 'at-risk' group, study says’
‘A ‘Fit’ Over Rankings: Why College Engagement Matters More Than Selectivity.’
Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be
EPISODE 4 [TRANSCRIPT]
“JW: I don't tell them, these are the best four years of your life, because I don't believe that either. These are four really great years for growth in our house, and perhaps I did this deliberately, I think, because my husband and I both went to Harvard. We had our reunions. I was one of my few peers who never brought my kids to the reunions from day one, at my 20th, at my 15th, and my husband, we just didn't, because we didn't want our kids to see us so joyful and happy on the campus of a school that has a 3% acceptance rate.”
[0:01:43] JU: All right, folks. Great to see everybody here today. Welcome to another episode of The Paint & Pipette Podcast. I am delighted to get to have a chance to talk with the amazing journalist, Jennifer Wallace, about her new book, Never Enough. If you want drop in the comments here on LinkedIn, if you have questions where you're coming from. Jonathan, I see your excellent question about worrying about young people and when they're told that their worth is in their grades and accomplishments. So, if others of you have questions, feel free to drop in the comments and hopefully, Jenny and I can get to some of them by the end of the show. Without too much preamble, what I want to do is I want to welcome Jenny. Thank you, Jenny, for joining us today.
[0:02:23] JW: I’m so happy to be here. Thanks for having me.
[0:02:25] JU: Super fun. I got to say, I was expecting to read a book about my kids. As you know, and as maybe some listeners here do, really quickly, I realize this is actually a book about us, as parents. I thought it would be really cool. If you wouldn't mind, maybe share a little bit about how this topic hit your radar. You actually say something in your book about the parent-teacher conference being a stay-at-home mom's annual performance review. I thought that's just too good and too true to be anecdotal. I don't know if that's a good jumping off point, but I just wanted to give you a minute to say, how did this topic get on your radar as a mother yourself?
[0:03:05] JW: First, thank you so much for having me. I am thrilled to be here. My background is as a journalist. I was journalist for 60 minutes. Then when I had my kids moved over to print journalism, Wall Street Journal, Washington Post. Over the years, I have three teenagers. I have a 17-year-old, a 16-year-old and a 13-year-old. Over the years, I've been noticing just how different my children's childhood was from my own growing up in the 70s. Our weekends were really busy. Homework was much heavier. The kids’ lives started to take center stage in our home. So anyway, I've been thinking about these topics for a while.
[0:03:44] JU: Are you saying you weren't center stage in your parents’ home? Is that what you're saying?
[0:03:48] JW: I think they would argue that I was and they drove me to defeat tournaments every weekend. I went to all of my tennis matches, but there was just a whole other level to parenting today. I don't think my parents were up at night like I have been known to do, worrying about my son dropping from an A to a B and a subject that he loves. I don't think my parents were sleepless thinking about that.
[0:04:12] JU: They’re thinking, they probably deserve it. If you drop to a B, you deserve it. Not what it's an existential crisis, right?
[0:04:18] JW: Exactly. Exactly. Then in 2019, I wrote an article for the Washington Post about how students attending what researchers call high-achieving schools. Those are public and private schools around the country where the majority of kids go off to good four-year colleges, where they have access to AP classes and lots of extracurricular offerings. Those kids in those schools are now an at-risk group, according to the National Academies of Sciences, as well as the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. So, two very credible reports found these kids to be at-risk. At-risk, meaning they are two to six times more likely to suffer from clinical levels of anxiety, depression, and substance abuse disorder than the average American teen.
My kids are in these schools. I wanted to know as a parent, what could I do to buffer against these excessive pressures that they may be feeling. So, funny that you bring up the year-end review comment, because it really did when I wasn't working at 60 minutes anymore and I was – took a few years off to raise my kids, that was the feedback, right? If I wasn't getting performance reviews at school, I mean, at work, then I was getting performance reviews in my job as a full time stay-to-home mother. I definitely felt that pressure. I wanted to write a book that really put into context a lot of the fears that parents are feeling. We tend to personalize our fears and anxieties instead of contextualizing them. I wanted to give parents and myself a greater context.
[0:05:59] JU: You actually dive into that later in the book. We'll get there hopefully later, but the power of community versus isolation. Let's not spoil the ending too much, but you've hinted at, but I’d love it if you wanted to start with perhaps Dr. Suniya Luthar's research on who is at risk and why are they at risk? Because I think the why is as important and as surprising as the who.
[0:06:20] JW: Her research starting in the 1990s and carrying on through today. She recently passed away, but her research looked at students in relatively affluent communities, not the 1% up to 10%. These students that attend these high achieving schools generally fall within the 20 to 25% of household incomes. That's roughly 130,000 a year. They do hail from the favored fifth, the top socioeconomic group. But what she found was that there are pressures in this group to the success of pressure to achieve. When you are living in a community of high achievers, many of whom went to college, all of whom probably want their own kids to go to college, you live in an environment of excessive pressure.
Every win sets the bar even higher for the next win. You are competing with your peers for a spot in the AP calculus class. You're competing with your peers to be the president of the debate team. While competition was around when I was in high school, I certainly wanted leadership positions. I certainly wanted A's. It was in front and center in my life as it is in so many of the students that I interviewed around the country for this book. Their achievement was front and center and their sense of worth was entangled with it. They felt good about themselves when they were achieving. They felt anxious and depressed when they weren't.
[0:07:51] JU: Let's talk about this a little bit and drill into what it seems to be as a gap between the expectations that are placed upon children and the values that parents would say they espouse. I mean, you cite some fascinating I would say, a perception gap between what parents say they value and what children believe their parents value. Can we talk a little bit about that?
[0:08:14] JW: Yeah. There have been a few studies. One of them was the Making Caring Common nonprofit, affiliated with Harvard's graduate school of education and also Suniya Luther's research. What these two groups of researchers looked at where they asked parents to rank their top values that they wanted for their kids. Things like being a good person, happy or successful. Then they asked students about those same values and they said, “What do you think your parents prioritize?” The parents reported that they wanted their kids to be happy, and kind, and success lagged behind.
The kid reported that their parents wanted them to be successful and that came front. That was the first thing. I have yet to meet a parent that did not love their child unconditionally. I have yet to meet that, but what you hear when you ask the students is that that love doesn't always feel unconditional. It can feel like they're loved and they're liked and they're cherished more when they achieve. As one student put it to me, “The house is certainly much lighter when I'm doing well at school. My parents are certainly much happier with me.”
I actually got this great advice from a therapist in California, Tina Payne Bryson, about four questions parents can ask themselves. Parents might be thinking, “I'm not putting on too much pressure at home. I'm really not.” She said, ask yourself these four questions. You will tell you a lot about what you're signaling to your child about how achievement matters, how much it matters to you. The first question she says is, “Look at your child's calendar outside of school. How much of that is achievement oriented? How many of their activities are travel sports, tutors, coaches?”
Okay, the second thing she says is, “Look at how you spend your money as it relates to your kids. Where are you putting your money? Is it on, again, those achievement-oriented goals?” Then she says, “Notice what you ask your kids about. When they walk in the door at the end of the day, are you saying, how do you do on your Spanish quiz or are you leading with lunch or another innocuous question like, what do you have for lunch today? That signals that you care about more than just the grades.”
[0:10:34] JU: Yeah.
[0:10:35] JW: Then the final thing, which I think is very telling, is notice what you argue with your kids about. Those four things will tell you a lot about the messages you are sending your kids about what you value most.
[0:10:49] JU: Okay, so let me make sure I just get these four, because I think it's great for any parents who's listening here. One, look at your calendar. Two, look at your finances. Three, look at your questions. Four, look at your arguments. What would you say? I mean, maybe just not to be too nerdy, but this is, I think, we're allowed to really drill into the data here. What's a healthy or a proper ratio, say, for calendar or finance? Because the answer is not zero. It is not a hundred. Where are we at risk of too little? Where are we risk of too much?
[0:11:20] JW: Yeah. So, actually the Challenge Success, which is affiliated with Stanford, is a nonprofit that looks at helping kids have the right balance when it comes to achievement and well-being. They offer a guide for parents called PDF that every day a child should have playtime, downtime, and family time. That is over and above any activities or schoolwork that they have. As a parent, I think you want to ask yourself, and frankly, I do this with my teenagers when they – when we talk about their course load and what they're taking. I say, “Listen, these are the non-negotiables for me. You need a full night's sleep, because sleep is the glue that holds humans together.” That's something the child psychologist Lisa Damour told me.
Really is the most important clue, I think, to begin. I say, fine, you want to take those AP classes? We're making a pact that you're getting the right amount of sleep that you are having time to see your extended family, which is one of our family values. Almost every weekend we see some members of our extended family. Then I want them to have time with their friends to just be a teenager. I say to them –
[0:12:40] JU: That's the play aspect, perhaps?
[0:12:42] JW: That's the play. For younger kids, it would be free play. For older kids, it's, do you have time where you're just hanging out with your friends? Don't get these years again. There are lessons to be learned that are just as important as a achievement.
[0:12:58] JU: While we're geeking out here for a second, listeners of this show and friends in my network know I'm a huge cognitive bias nerd. You had me at hello, so to speak, when you started talking about a couple of key cognitive biases that actually drive some of these perception gaps. You care to let folks know what are the cognitive biases that are actually plaguing parents when it comes to these dynamics?
[0:13:21] JW: Are we talking about the negativity bias?
[0:13:23] JU: Well, I'd love to hear about that too. I was thinking of the two S's. At least that's how I put it in my mind. Scarcity and status.
[0:13:30] JW: Status. I go into this in one of my chapters about how we got here. I was reading a book. Actually, we were on vacation as a family, a trip of a lifetime that I'd been wanting to go on for my entire life to Africa. So, I bought a book about status in the animal kingdom. We would read it every morning before we went out on a safari. Status is something that we have inherited from our earliest ancestors, the people with the high status. Got the first choice of mates. They got the best place to be high up on the ground, high up away, so from predators. They got the best choice of meat.
Status really served this huge evolutionary purpose. You can still see it playing out in Africa today and the animals on safari, but you could also see it playing out in the cocktail parties in New York City. On the playgrounds where our kids are, where people are jockeying for status. Who they know? What they wear? Who makes it onto the baseball team first? Who's the first pick? So, status, while it's something we inherited and it's something that we're wired for, it's less accurate today. It's less of – it's called the smoke detector principle. This is a researcher, Nesse is his last name, where our status alarms could go off like the way a fire alarm goes when you're burning a bagel.
Things like you're kid not getting enough playing time on the soccer field. You can have that status scarcity triggered in your mind. At that moment, it's a very uncomfortable neurochemical cocktail that's coming on in your brain. We're not aware of it. We could do things that are not in our best interest to squash that emotion, to squash that painful feeling. We can yell at a coach or we could yell at our kid or, but these are not helpful things.
[0:15:24] JU: The reality is that the house isn't on fire. You burned a bagel. The reality is it's not an existential threat to your child to get pulled off the field, but what you're saying is the way we're wired, it's somewhat indistinguishable from perhaps an existential threat.
[0:15:37] JW: We need to be aware of it. We need to be aware of how it plays on us and how we can control it. We can be aware of it. This is a natural part of human nature, but we do have to hold ourselves accountable for how we act on those fire alarms.
[0:15:51] JU: Okay. That's the status alarm. The scarcity alarm or is the other to me, maybe one thing that'd be fun to do at this point, which I know is going to strike a nerve judging from some of the comments that I'm getting in the chat here. Let's talk about where status and scarcity collide, which is the college admissions process, right? Let's talk about the cocktail there that gets released and what are the implications of that?
[0:16:15] JW: Yeah. When I was going to college, I went to Harvard and it was an 18% acceptance rate. It's now a three or 4% acceptance rate. Really, it's a lottery. In some ways, I believe, and I have a son who's a senior and starting to apply to colleges right now as we speak. The way I talk about it in our home is try your best, put your best effort forward. This isn't about you, whether you get it or not. This isn't about the institution's priorities. In a way, I believe because it's become so ridiculous and the percentages are so low that I think in some ways it's taken some of the sting out of the rejection.
[0:16:55] JU: Interesting. Yeah. It's like, it is so unlikely anyway, that I'm not surprised that I didn’t’ get it.
[0:17:00] JW: Yeah. What we're talking about in our house as we go through this, and this is only because I did four years of research, not because I came up with this myself. But what we talk about is rather than the prestige of a school, we talk about how my kids should go to school. In other words, the research that looks at whether or not you enjoy midlife happiness. Midlife career success and financial success have much less to do with the actual school name or prestige and more with what you do when you're on that campus.
[0:17:35] JU: Let's go to what you do in a second, but I think it's easy to overlook that point, but to me, that was profound. When you made you made the point about how the valedictorian’s and salutatorians in the US are enough to 2X overfill the top 20 schools. Just get it up themselves. Yet, to me, what was amazing is some of the research that shows perhaps a lack of correlation with long term life fulfillment or success relative to those talk performing institutions. Can you talk a little bit more about that before you talk about –
[0:18:06] JW: Sure. I wrote a section in the book called, Reject the Premise, which I had my senior read as I was writing it. A lot of the research, actually, if parents are interested in this topic, you could read about it in my book, you could also download a white paper on this very topic called, Fit Over Rank that Denise Pope wrote at Challenge Success, which is affiliated with Stanford.
What she talked about was she looked at very large data sets and she looked at the available research and the literature about prestige, whether a public institution or private institution, what really set kids up for success. Frank Bruni wrote another great book on this, Where You Go Is Not Who You'll Be. There was a study that just came out on blanking on where I read it, but that was talking about how – if you're an athlete that gets into the Ivy Leagues for your sport versus your raw intelligence and scores, you will not earn as much. In other words, bank on your child, don't bank on the school. That's my motto in my house that I believe that all three of my children have great strengths that can improve the world. I'm betting on them. I'm not betting on anyone's school to bring them success.
[0:19:23] JU: That's beautiful. I love – by the way, it's awesome to hear how practical it is in your home right now. I think it's part of what makes it so real in your book. Talk about, for a second, how do you start to assess fit, if fit trumps rank, so to speak? How do you start to either assess and or prepare for fit as you're preparing your kids for school?
[0:19:43] JW: What I started doing with my son, we did not start talking about colleges until spring of junior year. That was just a rule in our home that I really wanted him to enjoy high school. I wanted to enjoy these four years that I have with my kids. I don't want the word college to come up every day. So, that was our first rule. The second rule was that when junior year came the spring, we had to start talking about colleges. I got this advice from a parent that I interviewed on Saturdays, one hour, we would talk about college at a time that my son wanted to talk about it. The rest of the week, we didn't. We would save our questions just for that one hour.
Again, I did not want it overpowering my home. Then when it came to fit, I would start spring of junior year talking about things like, when you go to college, do you want to be on a school where you're meeting new people every day or do you want to go to a school where you're walking on the campus and you recognize people and you know those people? So, we started just talking about what feeling did they want on the campus. Then we started talking about, do you want to be near a city? Do you want to be near a rural area? Do you want to see another part of the country? So, then we started just talking about geography.
Then, now that we're actually going on the tours, we're now talking about how I want them to go to school. I want them to go to school where they have the confidence to meet a professor and to get to know a professor. I want them to think about what extracurriculars they're going to do on that campus, so that they can feel valued by their peers and also add value to that campus in some way.
That's how we talk about it in our house. It's very practical. I don't tell them these are the best four years of your life, because I don't believe that, either. These are four really great years for growth. In our house, perhaps I did this deliberately, I think, because my husband and I both went to Harvard. We had our reunions. I was one of my few peers who never brought my kids to the reunions from day one. At my 20th, at my 15th at my husband's. We just didn't, because we didn't want our kids to see us so joyful and happy on the campus of a school that has a 3% acceptance rate.
[0:21:55] JU: Right. You don't want that to be your happy place and therefore their happy place. I wasn't expecting that segue, but it's actually a perfect segue to what I feel is the beating heart of the book around this topic of mattering. I would love if you would talk for a little bit about what drives a child's self-worth?
[0:22:16] JW: Yes. I went in search of the healthy strivers for this book. I really wanted to find solutions. I wanted to know what if anything, the healthy achievers that I met throughout the country had in common. What did their parents focus on at home? What was school like for them? What were their relationships like with their peers? Did they have certain mindsets and behaviors? I found quite a few things that these healthy strivers had in common. Really what it boils down to, I get into it in depth in the book, but what it boils down to is this idea of mattering, what psychologists call mattering.
Mattering, it's an idea that's been around since the 1980s. It was originally conceptualized by Morris Rosenberg who brought up self-esteem. What he found in the 1980s was that kids who enjoyed a healthy level of self-esteem felt like they mattered to their parents. They felt known and significant and important to their parents. What I found among the healthy strivers that I met was that they had this deep sense of being valued for who they were deep at their core, away from their accomplishments, away from their statistics. By their family, by their friends, and by their larger community.
Importantly, they were dependent on to add meaningful value back to their families, to their friends, and to their communities. These kids who enjoyed this high level of mattering, it acted a protective shield. It wasn't that they didn't feel anxious and depressed. They certainly had failures and setbacks, but what mattering did is it acted a buoy. It lifted them up and made them more resilient. Mattering has completely changed my life and completely changed my parenting.
[0:24:08] JU: Maybe you could go in the second edition or paper back of the book. My wife and I, years ago, went through the foster training process to be able to accept foster placements on our home. We've done that a few times over the years. One of the things that surprised me was the emphasis. People say, parenting doesn't come with a handbook or a manual. I feel foster training is probably the closest you can get to like – parenting manual, by the way, just for anybody who feels like they don't know. That was a very helpful training process for me. One of the things that they emphasize is for a child to feel belonging or connection, which probably is related to mattering, you need to give them chores. They talked about if a child doesn't have chores, they feel they're a visitor. You don't give visitors chores, but you give members of the family responsibility. To me, it just ties in. You said they're dependent on to add value.
[0:24:59] JW: Yes.
[0:24:59] JU: I think sometimes you think, let's remove responsibility. It seems actually, no, giving that responsibility is a critical part of helping someone feel valued.
[0:25:08] JW: That is exactly right. Research is described mattering as a meta need. It encompasses feelings of belonging, connection, mastery. I think of mattering as belonging and connection in action. As a parent, I can't really solve for my kids belonging. I can't make them feel like they belong at school or they belong with their peer group. But what I can do is I can focus on helping them feel like they matter to their friends. I could give you a quick example that really shows up close in my home.
My son, who's a senior now, COVID was in his freshman year of high school. It was a crummy way to go through high school. We live in New York City and we spent our COVID outside of New York City. He was away physically from his friends. He didn't have – he had no contact really with his friends other than on Facebook and texting. So, when he got back to school, he felt disconnected. He still had friends, but he didn't feel like a deep connection to them.
A few weeks in, a couple of friends came up to him and they said, “You know, we really would hope that maybe you'll think about joining the baseball team. We know it's not your primary sport, but we're short one player. If we don't have a player, we won't be able to play.” This is at the high school level, JB – so, he came home from school and he's like, “You know mom, if I play, it's going to really take away from my time with my schoolwork. I'm taking hard classes. That's at least a two-hour commitment per day.”
Before I researched this book, I probably would have said, “You know what, academics are the most important. You're really a scholar. I think baseball to go to a few games and root them on, but maybe don't devote so much time to it.” But because of mattering, and because I saw that he wasn't feeling like he was valued by his friends, I thought this is the way to get him back on track. I said, “Well, what do you want to do?” He said, “Well, I think I should do it. I think it would be really good for my friends if I did it.” I said, “Great.” Boy, did that set him up for the most extraordinary year and extraordinary high school experience. He deeply felt valued. He literally was told by his teammates, “Thank you so much for doing this. Thank you for playing. Thank you for being on this team.” He felt valued. Actually, this is not the reason to do it, but it created this positive upward spiral. Actually, he did really well academically. I credit it to that positive spiral that he felt like he mattered deeply at school.
[0:27:37] JU: Okay, you're talking about spirals. It makes me think of another spiral that you really emphasized in the book around parental mattering and what enables parental mattering to occur. You talk about – define that term and then talk about how it is actually enabled in the home.
[0:27:52] JW: Yeah. Let me step back and say something that I think was next to mattering the most extraordinary finding of the research in this book, which is the number one intervention for any child in distress is to make sure their primary caregivers that their resilience, their well-being, their mattering is intact, because a child's resilience rests fundamentally on the resilience of the adults in their lives. Adult resilience rests on the support and depth of their relationships. We are often told by the multibillion-dollar self-care industry that, “Oh, just get bubble baths, download this meditation app, drink some tea.” Those are all great stress reducers. Go nuts. Do those things, but they are not going to give you the resilience that deep relationships will give you.
If you want to be a first responder to your kid struggles in the home, you need to shore up your own mattering and resilience. You need to feel valued. You need to prioritize yourself in your home. You need to be in the words of one therapist, a selfist, not selfish, but a selfist, whose needs are just as important as the rest of the people in your home. For parents to feel that mattering, they need to feel valued. We live in a time where the expectations on parents is extraordinary and intense of parenting like we are doing now. It really cuts into our own sense of mattering, because we put ourselves last. We exhaust ourselves. That does not help our kids.
I do a whole chapter in the book on adult mattering and how to shore that up. Really, what we need to do is we need to find one or two people in our life, not our partner, not our wife or husband, but somebody outside the home that we can be vulnerable to, that we can open up to about the struggles in our own life and in our kids’ lives. That we can feel seen and heard and cared for, just like we try to be for our kids. That takes not a lot of time, the research finds. It takes one hour of deliberate time a week and that's research that came out of the Mayo Clinic.
[0:30:11] JU: How do you find that deliberateness, just to put a fine point on it?
[0:30:15] JW: Right. What this Mayo Clinic study showed was that they needed a small group and they committed to each other. They said to each other literally, out loud and this can sound very cringy, but will you be my go-to person? Will you be the person in my life that when I'm struggling, I know I can call you? They found that they had these female doctors, female nurse practitioners meet for one hour a week with their go-to people over the course of three months.
Nobody dropped out and everyone in the study reported that they felt more resilient and the researchers also measured the cortisol levels after these sessions and they were reduced. These mothers who were looked at in these, what they're called authentic connections groups. These mothers felt like they mattered and that it was one hour a week. That was it. In their calendar, one hour a week.
[0:31:11] JU: The industry committee was a concept that I thought. I actually was telling my wife about it, last night, the value of – because we can prioritize time with our spouse, which is wonderful, but part of what the research you decided to choose is, actually there's value to relationships outside of the home. Why is that?
[0:31:29] JW: Because our relationships are already so taxed. We are living in what I write in the book. We are living in these one-person villages. Our families are now these super small villages, where we have to be everything to each other. It's not realistic. It's not healthy for the marriage or the partnership. Really, having people outside the home that you can turn to for the benefit of the people within it.
[0:31:53] JU: What would you say is, if I think about myself or many parents, probably, listening to this episode, this conversation. Most of our time is taken up with work. Then whatever margins we have, we want to give to our family. How do we think about mattering at work? I know you wrote an article in the Wall Street Journal about this. Is it also mattering at work, is it a function of friendship too, or if I take into the stream of logic, you put together that a child's resilience is a critical kind of component of there being a healthy, which you call a healthy driver?
That's a function of a parent being psychologically present, which is a function of their resilience is relationship and friendship and go to committee, the solution they’re at work too, or are there other things that we should be doing if we think about the bulk of our time, being spent in the workplace. What are other ways to bolster our own resilience and mattering, so that we can be available and present for our kids?
[0:32:52] JW: Yeah. There are so many people today who feel like they do not matter at work, that they show up, that they're anonymous, that they could be easily replaced or laid off. They're not told how their work fits into the larger hole. They're also made to feel like they don't matter. I mean, there are some workplaces that are toxic and with managers and supervisors who bully the people below them. How can a parent show up after a day of feeling like they don't matter at work as a full first responder for their kids struggles? We can't. It's impossible.
I do champion the idea of focusing on mattering at work. I'm actually writing a second book about this now. What it means to matter at work is to create a culture where every single person in that office matters, where every single person in that office is known. It doesn't – if it's a large corporation, it's everyone in the department is known. They are seen as their full selves, not just as an employee, but there are things going on outside their lives. People should ask about it. We should normalize the fact that we have full lives. We should also make a point and some companies are doing this to recognize, to have a formal way of recognizing how that employee's work fits into the larger hole, so that they can see why they're important to the company, how they're adding value to the bottom line.
There are lots of things that companies can do at a company level and on a personal level. I did a talk with Resy, the online reservation. It's funny enough. I am speaking with about 25 corporations about this book. A lot of my talks around this because a lot of parents are curious about mattering and roll it out in their offices too. At Resy, a 30-year-old employee raised his hand and he said to me, “Some days I really don't feel like I matter, like some days I just don't feel I'm valued. Is there some mantra I could say to myself in those moments?” I said, “I have something better than that. I think what you do on those days when you're having a rough time is you go to the cafeteria and you thank the man or the woman who's always greeting you with a smile, serving you your food, and telling them how much they mean and how much they brighten your day.” I think by unlocking mattering in other people is the best way to unlock it in ourselves.
[0:35:23] JU: Yeah. Yeah, that's beautiful. Is there a role for managers to play? Is that, I mean, one thing that comes to my mind immediately is it's one thing to tell which I love. The individual contributor, go to the line cook, if necessary, to be able to express yourself. How does a manager balance, probably, can a managerial duty and responsibility and stewardship of performance and things like that with the question of mattering and worth? To be safe for example, that our kids’ worth isn’t the function of their achievement. In the workplace, it's not quite so simple. Personal worth and individual self-worth certainly, but their potential value to the organization is actually a function of their work output, right? It seems like a very nuanced needle to thread for a manager. Do you have any recommendations there?
[0:36:09] JW: Well, I think it can be through performance reviews, but also like more than that, just more feedback. I am writing on this now. I will come back to you with more tangibles, but I think having really a system in place where people can feel appreciated when they're doing well. Whether that's in a Slack with a group from your department, recognizing each other's that really being grateful, really bringing gratitude. It's interesting, because I've been doing the circuit with the book. I'm really seeing so many cultures. You can pretty much immediately feel if a company you're walking into has mattering front and center.
Where do you feel it? You feel it when you walk in the door, how you're greeted by the receptionist. Does that receptionist feel like they matter to that company? Because if they don't feel like they matter, they're not going to make you feel like you matter. It starts there. It just goes on and on and on. Mattering is good for the bottom line. When an employee feels appreciated and valued, they're not going to look elsewhere for another job. It's also a way to counter burnout. There is a bottom-line advantage to making your employees feel like they matter, beyond just being a good moral thing to do.
[0:37:25] JU: Right. Absolutely. Okay. I want to do a lightning round of topics or phrases from the book and just give you a minute to riff on them, because there's a bunch of great phrases. We've covered a couple already. Here's one. Get curious, not furious.
[0:37:42] JW: Right. When your kid is not performing at school, most kids, all kids, not most. All kids want to do well at school. If your child isn't doing well, get curious about it. Could there be an underlying learning disability? Could there be that there's no connection with the teacher? Could it be that they're not feeling supported and connected in the classroom? Get curious, not furious.
[0:38:04] JU: Yeah. That's great. I love that. What about puppy dog principle?
[0:38:08] JW: Oh, yeah. This once a day, greet your kids like the way the family dog greats the family, with just total joy, just loving them for who they are and the joy they bring into your life.
[0:38:19] JU: How do you implement it with kids who are older? What does that look like?
[0:38:22] JW: I'm still affectionate with my older kids, but I know that that might feel unusual to some parents with teens. Well, I have another tip that's not even in the book, but just one that I heard on the radio a few years ago and I filed it in my head. One mother was talking about how she now does facials with her teenagers, so that it's not a hug. It's not – but she's like literally like putting in the lotion, putting on the face mask. It's just a way of touching her children every day in an affectionate way.
[0:38:51] JU: Yeah. Yeah, it's great. Actually, it makes me think differently about bedtime tickles. I give my daughter's tickles at night and sometimes it's like I really don't feel like it, but insofar as it's a way to, I mean, I scratch my dog's belly every day, right? Insofar as it's an opportunity to enforce the puppy dog principle. That’s good. What about play? You emphasize the importance. I mean, forget – I mean, setting aside PDF.
[0:39:15] JW: Yup.
[0:39:16] JU: Play as a family, something like that.
[0:39:19] JW: Yeah. My husband, who's very playful, issued NOFAs and OFAs. NOFAs are non-optional family activities. Once a week, there are NOFAs and we have three teenagers, so he knocks on the door and issues these NOFAs. It could be playing monopoly. It could be a video game that he's been known to do with the kids or going on a drive or going on a hike, but once a week, we have NOFAs. Then OFAs are optional family activities. These are things that kids can opt in or out of, but we – just because our teens are pulling away from us developmentally, it doesn't mean parents should be pulling away too. We need to keep knocking on the door. We need to keep that relationship and that connection strong, even if it means issuing NOFAs.
[0:40:02] JU: How do you determine which activity is a NOFA versus a OFA?
[0:40:05] JW: Oh, it's on my husband. He does it. He's all into the branding. He brands everything. Everything in our house has a brand.
[0:40:12] JU: No, sorry. I mean, which one's optional versus not – like what makes an activity –
[0:40:17] JW: Whatever he wants and feels like is the deepest connection. Some of the NOFA is definitely are about extended family and friends when we want to get together. We really emphasize in our family the importance of connection and connecting with other people. A lot of the NOFAs are about that.
[0:40:33] JU: Okay. The last one, and this is a juicy one, but I'll let you go off on it. Can you talk about materialism and mental health?
[0:40:41] JW: Oh, yeah. This was a great chapter. I interviewed Tim Castor, who is one of the world's leading researchers on how our values impact our mental health and well-being. What he told me, and which I did not know, that we are all born with roughly a dozen core values universally. Depending on our environments, certain ones get triggered. When you are raising your kids in a very materialistic environment, doesn't just mean the love of logos. It means career goals, going to a good school, having a high GPA, those are all materialistic values that values operate like a zero-sum game.
The more time you are spending on materialistic values, the less time and bandwidth you have in your life to invest in intrinsic ones that are actually known to bring us the well-being a mental health that we want. Such as being a caring neighbor, being a good member of society, having close relationships, investing in your own growth as a human. Our kids are exposed to a lot of materialistic values through social media, through their schools, through their peers. It's a parent’s job at home to really balance the scales and focus on intrinsic values as much as we can, to act as a buffer against the materialistic ones.
[0:41:59] JU: Yeah. I found it fascinating to realize that just the quote, I don't remember who the researcher was, who asked you, but he said to you, he put it quite bluntly, he said, “Why not move?”
[0:42:08] JW: Exactly. I said to him, “I'm raising my kids in New York City. They're all going to these competitive schools.” I said, “Short of moving, what can I do?” He said, “I don't buy the premise of your question, if you knew there was lead in the water, you'd pull your kids out of that school.” Then I got all red. Luckily, we weren't on Zoom. We were just on the phone. Then he like, he interrupted the silence and he said, “Well, if you are going to stay, then you have to be very deliberate about the values that you emphasize at home. You need to have conversations about values as openly as you do sex and drugs, not once a year, but not one 50-minute lecture, but 51-minute lectures.”
[0:42:46] JU: Yeah. It's really powerful. It's really profound. I'm really excited to see what the mattering at work research and your insights are there. You remind me of, on the show we had a few weeks or maybe a month ago, Seth Godin, who recently wrote a book, The Song of Significance, which is, I think if you haven't read it, I would highly recommend it. It's very much related today. He doesn't put it in quite those words, but I think there's really a thematic connection that I would just, as an offering to you, I would offer that up as a great resource.
[0:43:15] JW: Awesome. I would just love to say to people, mattering is actionable. That's what I love about it. It's instinctual. There are actions we can take in our homes and in our workplaces and our communities to unlock mattering.
[0:43:30] JU: Jenny, thank you so much for joining us today. It's been a real pleasure. It's been illuminating eye opening. As I said, this book, Never Enough, is far more about us as parents than it is just our kids. Thank you for shining a spotlight on such important topics and we wish you all the best with your book lunch.
[0:43:45] JW: Thank you so much. I so appreciate it. Thanks for the great questions.
[0:43:48] JU: Yeah. Cheers.
[0:43:49] JW: Cheers.
[END]
The fine folks over at Section recently interviewed me about some common mistakes I’m seeing folks make when they use AI. One of the biggest ones? The tendency to expect too little, and get just that.