"A Second Baby Ruined My Life" & The Phrase We Apparently Can't Say

0:02 Welcome to Parenting Out Loud, the podcast for parents who don't always listen to parenting podcasts. We like to bring the news and the trends and the culture straight to you, straight to your ears, because God knows you don't have time to read anything or listen to anything. I'm Monique Bowley.

0:18 I'm Amelia Lester. And I'm Stacey Hicks.

0:21 And coming up on today's show, the viral essay that tells us that the second child ruins your life.

0:27 And are we keeping our children too leashed? A shocking case in the US suggests yes.

0:34 The Ashley Tisdale toxic mum's group chat story takes another turn. All of that coming up. But first, in case you missed it, an Adelaide mum has accidentally started a standoff this week over what's a pretty simple sentence. Take a listen.

0:54 My four-year-old came out and said to me the other day, you get what you get and you don't get upset. And I thought, where did you hear that? Because I have never heard that before and I've never said that to her. And apparently she got it said to her at daycare and then I was talking to a teacher about it and she's like, oh yeah, like that's a thing that they say in schools and stuff.

1:28 So this is Megan Watson. She posted this on TikTok to many thousands of views. And in her caption, she said, I'm confused. As a parent, we get taught to acknowledge their feelings and then they go to kindy and school and they're told things like this. Now, this little snippet made it all the way onto Channel 9's morning show where they brought on a parenting expert to talk about it. Amelia, what do you think? Is this in direct contrast to the way that we're being told to parent now?

1:55 I get why Megan had that reaction because this took me back to when I first heard the phrase, also probably around the time my kid was three at preschool. And it did shock me a little bit because I guess up until age three, that child is getting exactly what they want, not what they get. And there is this moment that when a child leaves the loving bosom of the home and goes into a group childcare environment, They got to learn some hard lessons. And you know who else has to learn those hard lessons? Their parents.

2:28 So I totally get why Megan felt a little jarred by this. Yeah.

2:34 I thought what was interesting with that was that she goes on to say, but we're meant to validate their feelings. Like we can't tell them not to get upset. We can't tell them to bottle it up. But I don't think that's really where that saying began, right? Like it's very much the type of thing that is about, you know, you've just got to suck it up sometimes. If there's 10 kids in the class and you get a blue straw and they get a pink straw, tough. You just have to deal with it. It's not about them bottling up their emotions. I love that that's where people went with it.

3:01 Yeah.

3:01 People had a lot of thoughts. And the first one mainly was that it depends on the context. Like this saying is deployed in early childhood education and spaces, or primary schools where you've got 30 kids all getting a Zoopa Doopa or a sticker, and there is just no time to validate 15 feelings as you're giving them out.

3:23 And the comments kind of were split down the middle. Lauren said, as a teacher myself, it's a horrible saying. Why is telling a child to practically suck it up okay? We want emotionally capable children. But when the perfect opportunity presents itself to teach it, we shut it down with this saying. This saying gives them no context and practically tells them their feelings are invalid. And a lot of other people said, you know what, it's actually not that deep.

3:48 It just rhymes, guys. It sounds good rolling off the tongue. Just let us say it.

3:52 Yeah, but someone in the comments posted the 2027 version of it. And I think there's no greater example of how parenting has changed over the last decade than these two sentences. So it used to be, you get what you get and you don't get upset. Now, the alternative is you get what you get and you might get upset.

4:13 If you don't get your fave, you can practice being brave. Breathe in and breathe out. You don't need to shout. If you don't get your way, you can still be okay.

4:21 That's too long.

4:23 I can't remember that. And neither can all the kids with ADHD. Like, I think you get what you get and you don't get upset. It's just so sticky and easy to remember. I'm happy to stick with it for now.

4:32 100%. Agree. All right.

4:35 Now I've got some words of wisdom from Dr. Becky to share. If you don't know who Dr. Becky is, just all round legend, clinical psychologist. She just loves to drop these little nuggets on social media. She just is the best in the game. And we don't do advice on the show, obviously, but she just had the most amazing reframing of what it means to be a shy kid.

4:56 And I just wanted to share it with other parents who also have a shy kid.

5:00 Old idea.

5:00 What if we have it wrong and your shy kid is actually the.

5:03 Most confident kid in the group?

5:05 Your kid who sits on your lap during a birthday party and isn't ready until the last five minutes?

5:09 You're a kid who waits on the sideline at the first soccer practice, even though all of their friends are running around and playing.

5:15 I have thoughts about why this kid might be the confident one. Now she goes on with a very lengthy Instagram caption, which is her MO. I will not read you the whole thing, but I'll tell you the golden part out of it. She says, We call that confidence. But when the same instinct shows up in a four-year-old at a party, we call it shy. Your kid is reading the room and saying, I'm not ready yet. Confidence is knowing when you're ready.

5:43 Stacey, you just bring us the best little internet nuggets. Isn't that the best? It's the best. I started watching this and I felt this sort of sense of cynicism rise up in me whenever I hear Dr. Becky speaking because I think I don't like to get parenting advice, even from people who are eminently well-qualified like Dr. Becky is.

6:04 But then I got to you and I was like, darn it, Dr. Becky. You've done it again. You've done it again, girl. Because that is actually a really helpful framing. And it reminds me that last week on the show, we talked about that amazing speech from a Sydney headmaster to his boys about how teenage boys need to learn to be upstanders, not bystanders.

6:25 Yep.

6:26 That's exactly what Dr. Becky is talking about here. Yeah, you're so right. I just, I love it.

6:32 And I think we often talk about, you know, oh, when they're rule breakers, that'll mean that they're great innovators when they grow up. And when they're really headstrong, that'll mean they're a great leader. Well, if they're really shy, that might mean that they don't succumb to peer pressure. And as you said, we'll just do what they think is right in the moment. And I love that.

6:49 This is the story which proves how impossible it is to parent the right way in 2026. Oh, joy. Gather around. Carrie Ann Parkinson is an American mom who has been convicted on a child abuse charge because, wait for it, she let her five-year-old son walk outside alone. Now, listener, you may be thinking, I'm sure there's more to this story, Amelia.

7:14 You're just simplifying things like you always do to prove a point. I want to hear the nuances. I want to hear the details that explain why this happened. Okay, listener, let me tell you. Here goes. Samuel, the five-year-old son of Carrie Ann Parkinson, he loves collecting goose feathers. And he and his mom live in a part of the U.S.

7:32 called Virginia where there are a lot of ponds with geese in them nearby. So one day, Kerri-Ann says, you know what, Sam? We live in a gated community. This is the kind of place where it has its own security. There aren't strangers wandering around. It seems very safe. She says, Sam, just walk 800 meters down this protected path to the local pond and go and collect some feathers and be back in time for lunch. Sam goes, okay. She starts making lunch. 20 minutes later, there's a knock on the door.

8:01 This is from the Washington Post account of what happened. And I think it will break your heart a little bit like it did mine. On the other side of the door was Sam, visibly shaken with a handful of feathers. Behind him stood a security guard who told her a neighbor saw her son outside alone and was so concerned they called security. So these gated communities often do have their own security forces. And then that security guard went on to call the police. And two weeks later, Kerri-Ann was charged with contributing to the delinquency of a minor.

8:35 And now just recently, which is why we're talking about it today, she has been convicted of a charge she never thought she would be convicted for. She thought this was just a security guard run amok, a police officer run amok, and surely the judge would see sense. But no, the judge did not see sense. As a result....

8:58 And she still was convicted of this. She could not get around it.

9:03 Yeah, that's a great detail. She was studying for the bar exam when she sent Sam off on this little errand. But now she's going to be on her state's child abuse and neglect registry for six years, which means that she can't do things like volunteer in her kids' school. So Kerri-Ann is appealing the conviction and she says, we want so much for our children to be safe at all costs. but the cost is a good childhood. Stacey, what was your reaction when you heard about this?

9:32 I'm glad you're asking me because I changed my tune a few times with this. As of course happens when you see stories like this, you kind of see, you know, the top tier details. And I initially went, I mean, I think the arrest is ridiculous, but I initially thought, yeah, I wouldn't let my five-year-old walk to a pond, especially given that's near water. She'd be on 35 side quests, you know, who knows what would happen. But the more I looked at this and the more I looked at the details, I was like, her five-year-old is not my five-year-old.

10:03 And that's where the problem with this story lies. The detail that changed it the most for me was the bit you said about how he was on paths set back. And it says even specifically three meters from the road. He's nowhere near the road. It also said that when he came back with the security guard, the security guard had to walk him home because he said to the security guard, I'm not allowed in your car. You're a stranger and I'm not allowed in your car. So I can walk, but I can't get in there.

10:31 That's amazing.

10:33 This five-year-old knew enough to know that he wasn't meant to do that, which therefore stands to reason that he obviously knew enough to know what he was doing.

10:41 And I think.

10:42 his mum made a call based on that specific child and what that child was capable of. And the thing is, in Australia and in the US, there's actually no minimum age where you're allowed to do this. Like it's not suddenly, oh, your child turned seven, she wouldn't have been charged for that. They don't even say it in the laws. It is down to parental discretion. And yet the parent wasn't allowed to have any discretion in this situation, despite the facts that Sam was safe. Like, we're not letting the parent make that decision to give their child enough rope to actually go out and explore.

11:18 By the way, Carrie-Anne, we mentioned, is a lawyer. Her husband and Sam's father is a relationship and family therapist. So I would imagine he's not someone who's making these kinds of decisions willy-nilly either. Mons, did this make you angry?

11:32 Yeah, it did because we know, and we've talked about before on this show, what children lose from being over-parented. And we have talked again and again about how rates of anxiety are growing, how independent skills are declining, and how all the experts in child development say this is due to intensive helicopter parenting. And so if you want to raise kids who are resilient, who are independent, who can solve problems, who can find out what they're made of.

12:05 You need to let go of the reins. And that's exactly what she's done here. And yet the culture and the law says no. And so I think what struck me, though, as incredibly interesting, because a lot of the people are saying this is neglect, this is neglect. But Amelia, you raised an incredible point, which is actually there is a neglect that happens when this intensive parenting happens, but it's not always with the children.

12:33 Mons, that's exactly what's infuriating to me about this story. We talked a lot on this show about the consensus that is growing amongst child development experts that helicopter parenting, snowplow parenting, whatever you want to call it, that is doing children harm. It is making them less resilient. It is making them less independent. If you want to know more about that, I would recommend the non-profit Let Grow, which has done a lot of amazing work pulling together the research on this. But that's familiar ground. What struck me in this story is that we as parents are losing something by having to conduct ourselves in such an intensive way with our children and by having to spend so much time with them. And I want to ask

13:11 what parents lose in spending too much time with their children, because by the way, they are spending more time than ever before. Parents now spend twice as much time with their children than 50 years ago. So this isn't just a feeling we get that we're spending a lot of time with our kids compared with what our parents spent with us. This is statistically borne out. Stacey, what I thought was a really interesting detail in this piece was that Carrie-Anne was studying for the bar exam. She was trying to further her education and her professional opportunities. And she also had other children and she was also eight months pregnant. Is she not, is Carrie-Anne not allowed to pursue a professional opportunity while allowing her son to take

13:52 safe and considered risks? Is that where we're at?

13:55 Yeah, I think it's an interesting, I think it's an interesting question because I think there'll be a lot of people listening who still say, well, if I saw a child walking on their own like that, I would probably intervene too, or I would be worried. Like, I think we can all admit that in 2026, if you saw a five-year-old alone, you would be concerned. You might think that something's wrong because it is rare.

14:15 So we're not.

14:15 Saying like that this is a common occurrence and we're all sending our children out.

14:20 We're not. But you're right. Well, I am. I've discussed on the show that my kids go out to get me coffee on the weekends. That's true.

14:27 That's true.

14:27 Amelia is doing it right. But the Let Grow organization that I referenced, the nonprofit, actually has a little card on its website you can print out that your kids can take with you when you send them on these errands alone that says, I am not a neglected child. My parents sent me out. And if you have questions, please direct them to my parents on this phone number.

14:46 That is so clever. I love that. Um, but yes, you're right.

14:50 What parents and what women, let's be, let's be honest, what women in particular lose is that time to themselves for independence. And then the child also loses that. It's not really doing anyone any favours. And I think, as you said, we spend more time with our children than in any other previous generation. And we lose something with them constantly beside us. They say that that's a contributing factor for the reason that many women particularly now experience parental rage postpartum, why they're experiencing a complete loss of self because they're so enmeshed with their children. Their children are never away from them. And then it folds into things for the children as well, like now with school camps.

15:31 Schools report having massive issues with that because the children are never used to being away from their parent. So everyone is losing independence. Everyone is losing time to really form who they are, mothers included.

15:42 Yeah, you ask, Amelia, what women lose, and women lose their sanity. And Georgie Dent stood up and told this story to the press club recently. You know, Women's Agenda write about this. Mamma Mia writes about this, that women lose their sanity because of the level of intense parenting. And the great irony is, is that apparently we're allowed to tell women that they can have it all, but God forbid they take their eyes off their children while they're doing it. Because there is this, it does seem like, God, this generation spent a long time fighting for women to have lives outside of motherhood. And then we've created this parenting culture that expects women to to parent like they don't have jobs and like they don't have lives. And

16:27 it punishes them when they don't. And it's in really subtle ways as well. It's like the way that the media will ask female politicians and CEOs how they do it all. The way that Vogue will put Serena Williams, the greatest tennis player of all time, on the cover holding a baby. The way that the same sort of media that punishes Emma Greed, this entrepreneur who admitted earlier this year that she's a three-hour mom, that she outsources a lot of the grind and she tries to do the memory making stuff with her children. And all of those people that do that, mothers that step outside the box of I'm a 100% devoted mother, I think are treated with suspicion and with what's wrong with you. And I don't know how we got here. I really don't.

17:14 This brings to mind something that happened to me recently and I don't often share personal things on this podcast but I just think this is very relevant where I went out with some parents from one of my kids extracurriculars and we had a great time together and we all really got along but for some reason the conversation turned to pick up from said extracurricular and the mums in the group did turn to me and kind of accused me of never picking my kid up from the activity.

17:43 And I did sense a little bit of judgment there.

17:46 Amelia, I've been admonished twice by other mothers for not following the good mother script. And it's this really kind of subtle, a comment here, a comment there, and it all adds up. It all adds to it.

18:02 And this isn't even about... mothers working outside the home versus mothers working inside the home. Because by the way, the mothers in this group who again are so lovely and we had a great time together, all of them have demanding jobs outside of the home. So it was not as though they were saying you shouldn't have a job.

18:20 It was more, where are your priorities?

18:23 Stupidly, we've built this culture where the more you sacrifice for your children, the better mother you're perceived to be. but that's not what the data says. And that's not also what Instagram quotes and memes say. They're like, fill your own cup first, put your own oxygen.

18:38 Mask on first.

18:40 But yeah, we're going down a massive rabbit hole here. But Stacey, I wanted to ask you, what happens to the women who don't want to sacrifice everything? What happens to the mother who says, actually, I want something for myself as well?

18:53 Yeah.

18:54 Well, I think two things. They either are branded quite selfish or told that maybe they don't have their priorities in order, or they feel guilty the entire time they're doing whatever that thing is. And I was thinking of Kerri-Ann with this as well, in that if I sent my child out, I would be feeling so stressed and so worried the whole time that it almost wouldn't feel like it was worth the risk for me. But I love that she did that to try and benefit her child and benefit herself at the same time, to have a little bit of rope for herself to then parent those children.

19:33 And Sam gets some goose feathers.

19:35 Out of it.

19:35 And Sam gets so much out of it too. Yeah.

19:38 So it breaks my heart that that confidence in himself is probably damaged now from that. But I just wanted to bring up another quote that she said, because I actually thought this was genius as well. She said, we have to be reasonable about assessing risk and not living in this place of a rational fear of a boogeyman that's just not even there. And I think that's something good for us to keep in mind when we're trying to let our children out into the world a little bit, that it's not always the worst case scenario. The thing about becoming a parent and whether deciding whether you're going to have one child or two children or seven children is that you can't go back. So you'll always be left wondering or you'll take that leap and a new

20:18 version of your life takes shape. But a dad wrote an essay for GQ this week about going from one child to two. And it is so brutally honest that it has a lot of people discussing something that I don't really think parents really ever say out loud. And you'll get what that is when I read you the name of the essay. My second child is perfect. He ruined my life.

20:42 Boom. Like, how good is that headline? I love it so much.

20:47 And the writer who dropped that truth grenade was Zach Barron. And I'm going to bet that his second child is going to be invoicing him for a lot of therapy in about 15 years when he finds this story online. So Barron goes through the fact that he has two children. They are four and two. So very much in the trenches of parenting at the moment. And he says that he and his wife always felt like two kid people.

21:10 They just said it just looked like there was a two kid size hole in their life. And that is what they would be doing. They didn't really discuss it much beyond that. They went through IVF to have those children. And so they were very solid in how they felt about that decision. But he goes on to describe having his second son as feeling like coming home and finding the furniture rearranged. It's your house, but it's not. Everything is in a slightly different spot. And he talks about and this is the part that people took particular umbrage with.

21:39 He said that people with one children have more in common with childless people than they do with parents of two. And he says that having one kid.

21:47 Can you just explain that to me? What does he mean by that?

21:50 Yeah, so he's saying that having one kid is like a companion for your grand adventure of life and that having two is the adventure.

21:58 The example he gives is, he says, if you have one child... you can decide to up and move to Paris, no problem. Yes, yeah. As apparently a friend of his did with their one child. If you have two children, you cannot. Yeah, that was his main example. And I was like, I have one child. I can't say that moving to Paris would be particularly easy for me to do right now, but I kind of get what he's saying.

22:23 And I think it's because you go from, particularly in a two-parent household, from having that one can step out, one person can step away from that and you can be man to man for a little bit. But when it's two children, you're always kind of needed there. And I'm dying to know from the two of you first, before we go into some of this.

22:44 Did the leap from one to two shock you? Were you surprised by that or did you feel okay? Monzi?

22:49 Oh, it's shocking. It's shocking.

22:54 Yeah, I'm like, who's going to tell her, Monzi? He's exactly right.

22:58 There's this beautiful passage and it's so well written that I loved. I highlighted it. I have not had a moment or thought of my own since dawn. The sheer amount of hours you spend looking after them in these first few years. I sometimes think about an energetic and physically fit single friend of mine, a film director who's become a surrogate uncle to my kids. He might be their favorite person in the world. If he and I were to actually switch lives, even for a day, he would die. He wouldn't make it. And that is what it feels like, the relentlessness of it.

23:37 Yeah. No, but I think part of this is because his kids are two and four. That's a lot. And there's an article in Slate that Greg Lavelle wrote in response to the GQ one, and he makes the point that it really depends on how old your kids are and that it was only when his kids, who are of a similar age gap, to Zach's were six and eight.

24:00 It was only at that point that his life started to feel more manageable. And I'm here to tell you as the proud parent of a six-year-old and an eight-year-old who I only sometimes pick up from their extracurricular activities. That is true. It does start to feel like you have a thought of your own.

24:17 Yeah.

24:17 Okay. I wanted to talk about why this cut through. Like obviously with a headline like that, sometimes it's just a great headline. But one of the reasons I think that this cut through was because we don't often hear people debating the one to two situation.

24:32 Right.

24:32 Because two children is what has been standard, it's kind of just like, oh, yeah, you'll be right. You've done it once before.

24:40 You can do it again.

24:41 But it feels like now the decision to go to two has become the new do I have children or not, right? Does it feel like that's happening a lot more? I mean, the birth rate is dropping. We're seeing that now it's lower than ever. It's 1.48 children.

24:56 I always think of this meme that you brought to the show, I think, Stacey, because you bring all the memes which said that Two children is the new three children. Yes. Three children is the new four children. And I think that's very true. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

25:13 And I guess the other bit is that this is the point of view of a dad. Like, I think that stood out to all of us when we spoke about this, is that we're not often hearing from fathers saying.

25:25 this.

25:25 Has really changed my life so much, so seismically. And I wonder whether that's because this is a generation of dads that are involved enough now to notice that change in such a way.

25:35 It is actually really delightful that the original essay caused such a fuss that this Greg Lavelle from Slate felt compelled to write back to this dad and say, hang on, like, I just want to let you know, it's not going to be like this forever. Like there is something really delicious about two men sort of going sparring on the internet for us all to enjoy their writing. And there's this beautiful, I loved the response in Slate and I might just read out a little bit of it because I thought it captured it so well. And it actually struck me I think I've been reading a lot of AI writing because when I read these two pieces, I was like, wow, that's writing. Like that is great. Here's what he says. While it's nostalgic to read a well-written

26:18 firsthand account from the trenches, most people are probably too tired to do it. Cause that's, I thought that too. I was like, this guy's written this piece and he's deep in the trenches. Like how did he have the brainpower to do it? Um, Writing during those early years is surely akin to an astronaut trying to scribble down a description of space travel before the boosters have separated.

26:40 With two small kids, everything's still vibrating in the cockpit and three Earths worth of gravity are mushing your body into the seat. You haven't even gotten to the metaphorical parenting version of floating around and seeing Earth from space yet. It just doesn't get better. It gets great. The view is like nothing you've ever seen. And that is so true.

27:02 It is so true that once you are out of the trenches, the view does become really spectacular.

27:07 It also makes me think though, would we even accept this piece by a woman? Like, is part of what we're all swooning over and in raptures about here that a man wrote a piece about children and about parenting? Thank you so much, man. I think so.

27:25 And that seemed to be the overall sentiment in the comments was people being like, welcome to a woman's life. She's been doing this since she had one child. You only noticed when you got to two.

27:35 I don't think if I pitch this to an editor... I don't think that an editor would commission it because a woman saying that it's really hard to parent a two-year-old and a four-year-old, the editor would quite rightly, I think, say, what's the news story? What's the development here? What's your insight?

27:52 You're so right.

27:54 And then another mother would never be able to rebut what you're saying because they would be like, well, no one's going to click on that. No one cares.

28:00 And then also are you being negative and hating on that woman's experience? I do think there's an element that like we have been saying this to men for a long time. It's just whether or not they have chosen to listen. Prince Harry this week was on a Masterclass episode about grief. And he said a very similar thing compared with what Zach said. He said, I wish I'd known how hard being a father was going to be.

28:24 And I'm not hating on Harry. He's had a really tough go of it. But I think people have been trying to say that this parenting caper is not easy for some time.

28:34 I want to go back to your point before, Stacey, about like, is it as bad as this guy makes it out to be? And I think the problem isn't always the number of children. It's the number of adults. Because this entire argument is based, it rests on having two adults available. But so with one child and two adults, one adult can always have a break or sub out.

28:54 two children, both adults are needed. But what if you're a single mum? What if you have kids with high needs? What if you have twins? What if you are living in a multi-generational household where actually you have a lot of adults around to take care of children? Like I think, yeah, I think the question isn't always how many children is the right number. It's how much support do we have around us?

29:15 Yeah, totally.

29:15 And the selfish part of me really enjoyed, you Zach finding this so hard because it made me go oh maybe one's fine and it doesn't matter have one have two have whatever you want it's all a bit of a glorious mess and it's.

29:31 Okay enjoy Paris yeah I'm going to go to Paris, guys. You're never going to see me again. I didn't realise that was an option for me. Bye-bye.

29:39 Girls, have you ever fallen out with a group of friends and then you've opened up your Instagram and they're all there hanging out together without you?

29:47 So this actually happened sort of in reverse. A friend group of mine, one person dropped out of the group and then when... We posted a photo on Instagram. She reached out and said, you need to take that down because it's hurtful to me.

30:02 Oh.

30:03 Which I don't think is quite right. No, I don't think so either. But why do you ask, Mons?

30:09 Well, it's what happened this week, but at another level because it was Celebrity Mums going on a little glamorous mums group trip. So this week, Hilary Duff, Mandy Moore, and their very, very glam mums group, when on a luxury girl's trip to Mexico, And Hilary Duff posted a bunch of photos with the caption, the group chat made it to the jungle. You know who probably wasn't thrilled to see this? Ashley Tisdale. I don't know if you remember this story from way back early this year, but she wrote a very revealing essay about leaving a toxic Hollywood mums group. And she didn't name names, but the inference was that it was Hilary Duff and Mandy Moore and that sort of cohort. Now, Hilary Duff denied it

31:00 and then her husband got involved and it all got very sort of messy. But then Ashley Tisdale sold the story to Netflix. She sold the rights to it to Netflix.

31:11 Well, she says she sold a fictional version of a mum's group drama.

31:16 It's very convenient timing, Ashley.

31:19 Stacey, you're up with all the gossip. Is Ashley Tisdale right now writing a new scene where the girls go to Mexico? Oh, yeah.

31:27 She is writing this into the script for sure. I can just imagine her going, that's brilliant. It's just like White Lotus. We'll go on location to Mexico. It's going to be amazing. It's so interesting that the Instagram post has become the ultimate proof of, look at us, we're doing better without you. And I think that's kind of what team Hillary was saying, but I think for Ashley, she'd probably just be laughing all the way to the bank with the fact.

31:54 That she'll just use this now. I don't think so, because I have to say that looks like the greatest girls trip of all time. Down to their swimwear, down to them playing mahjong amongst the palm trees with margs. Like, I'm sorry, I felt left out and I'm not even Ashley Tisdale. Yeah, she might be burning up inside.

32:16 All right, it is time before we head off today to give you our recommendations, the stuff that we are buying, watching, loving sick. Stacey, what have you got?

32:26 I've got a hack this week that I saw. It's from TikTok creator Ames. She's just so mysterious, this Aussie creator. She's just known as Ames, no last name. She's like Beyonce on TikTok.

32:37 She's huge.

32:38 And she has this genius hack if you get the ick from chicken.

32:42 Yes.

32:42 If you don't want to touch raw chicken, which who really does? If you don't want to touch it, this is how to crumb it without you having to touch it and then wash your fingers 27 times in between. You know how you go and do the little drizzle because you just can't stand it being on your fingers. So you just need a big Tupperware container, one that clips shut. You dump the chicken in there. So you can even buy the strips so you never have to touch it at all.

33:05 Dump it in there.

33:07 And put the flour in the container, shut the lid, shake it all around so it gets coated. Now put your egg in, shake it all around so it gets the egg on it. Crumbs, shake it all around so it gets the crumbs. You can guess where I'm going with this. Then you can just dump it straight in the fry pan. You didn't have to touch anything and you didn't have to use three separate plates for all the ingredients.

33:28 Is that not genius? That's pretty good.

33:29 Have you tried it?

33:30 Yeah, I did it.

33:31 It was great. Like it's not, obviously it's not like 100% coded perfectly, but who cares? It saved you the ick. So I want to recommend that everyone try that. Yeah.

33:41 What's yours, Mons?

33:43 I've got a beauty product. I know, I know.

33:45 Oh, plot twist from you. Not a vacuum cleaner? Not a battery pack?

33:49 No, it's because actually I'm a beauty influencer. But that's what people look at me. They go, wow, I want skin like hers.

33:56 Well, I am actually thinking that today.

33:57 How does she look 55 when she must only be in her 40s? Listen, I've had a big week at work and I do look like a cadaver. And my friend gave me a sample of this thing It's called the Go To Very Glowy Primer. And it fully, fully brought me alive. It is this glowy primer that you just put on before makeup, right? But I've just been putting it on and wearing it on its own. It's that good.

34:25 Are you wearing it now?

34:27 Yes.

34:27 It looks lovely.

34:27 It makes me look hydrated. It makes me look well-rested. It makes me look like I've done Pilates and I've drunk green tea all day. Like it is so, so good. So I immediately invested in a bottle. It's $ 50. But what price to look alive, I ask you?

34:42 Yeah, I love it.

34:43 It's working for you. No cadaver on screen right now.

34:46 It also has 332 four and a half stars on the reviews. And also people talk about it in the YouBeauty Facebook group. So I was like, oh yes, it is that good.

34:59 Love it.

35:00 Okay, great. Amelia? What have you got, Amelia?

35:02 Mine is an episode of the podcast, This American Life. Oh, I love that show. I haven't listened to it in ages. It's still going strong and it's still excellent. Is it still Ira Glass? Yes, it's still Ira Glass and he sounds exactly the same. It's so good. Look, most people wouldn't subject their parenting to a performance review from their 16-year-old daughter. But most parents are not the American Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Nicole Hannah-Jones, because she does exactly that.

35:28 She literally sits down with her 16-year-old daughter in this new episode of This American Life. It's called An Argument. And they have it out about various parenting decisions she's made that her daughter thinks were wrong. Oh, yeah. This American Life producer at the start of the episode admits that it's going to get really uncomfortable. And it does.

35:48 There are some points where there's just like long pauses. They're really being incredibly honest with each other. So the impetus for this is that it's particularly about decisions that Nicole made around her daughter Nadia's schooling. And a lot of the debate around schooling is quite America-specific. That said, I think a lot of Australian parents would relate to the debate between whether to send their kids to public or private schools, say, and also to what extent you want your children to be immersed in diverse educational environments, whether that's diverse in a racial sense or in an economic sense. They really get into these issues in the podcast.

36:28 But what it really highlighted for me is that whatever you decide is best for your child or whatever you hold on to most tightly when it comes to raising a child, that's exactly the pressure point that they're going to be rebelling against. If you hold on to a truth tightly, they're almost biologically programmed to push back against that.

36:50 And it was a real insight I had because I think you see that with kids all the time. Like I hate Salish and Jordan. I hate that show. My kids want to watch it all the time. And maybe if I just stopped going on about how much I despise Salish and Jordan, they wouldn't want to watch it all the time. So I think it's quite profound. I'm very grateful to Nicole and Nadja for giving us this gift of their conversation. There's one other phrase that really stuck with me, and it's kind of a theme of the episode. But this American Life reporter says, like all of us, Nicole's own experience raising a child is always running parallel to the memory of her own childhood. Parenting is an ongoing act of correction. There's a lot in there. Yeah,

37:37 that sounds so juicy. There is a lot in this episode. And if you parent with someone else, listen to it with them and have a chat about it afterwards. Listen to it with your kids. I don't know. There's a lot in it.

37:50 Well, that sounds like a beautiful thing to listen to straight after this. Thank you, Amelia. Before we go, Mamma Mia, are you a subscriber to Mamma Mia? If you are, it's your lucky day, okay? Because Mamma Mia is giving one lucky subscriber a $ 5, 000 voucher with B2C furniture to spend online or in store. They've got bunk beds, yes, in different sizes with the storage, and they've got those ones with the desk space underneath.

38:19 Oh, I had one of those as a kid.

38:21 They're the best.

38:22 You were rich. You also had Foxtel. Like you had it all. You had it all. Well, this could be your life too, if you are a subscriber. And with B2C, everything's in stock and ready to ship. So you don't have to sort of wait, order it and then wait 12 weeks for it to turn up and then hope it'll still suit the room. It's all just there, ready to go. It's high-end living made affordable. Designer looks without the designer price tag. If you are already a Mamma Mia subscriber, you are automatically in the running. You do not have to do a single thing. If you're not a subscriber yet, click the link in our show notes or head to mammamia.com.au forward slash subscribe. The offer ends October 31st. T's and C's apply. All right. That is

39:04 all we have time for this week on Parenting Out Loud. Have a great, great week. We will be back in this feed next Saturday morning.

39:12 Bye. Bye.

39:14 Mamma Mia acknowledges the traditional owners of the land on which we have recorded this podcast.