The Birth Rate is Collapsing Because of... Therapy?

In this episode, we explore the impact of bad therapy and redefined concepts of trauma on birth rates through the lens of a National Review article. The discussion references shocking findings from a New York Times article by Michael Leitz, highlighting the cultural shift in how Americans define harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. This shift has led to increasing rates of estrangement between parents and adult children and a nearly impossible standard for parenting. The conversation also dives into the toxic culture of trauma, the role of the mental health industry, and how therapy practices encourage cutting ties with family. We also discuss the implications of these trends on demographic collapse, supported by both personal anecdotes and broader societal observations.

Malcolm Collins: Hello Simone. I'm excited to be with you today. Today we are going to be talking about how bad therapy and therapists and bad psychology tanked birth rates, and we're going to be doing it through the lens of an article in the National Review titled Bad Therapy Tanked the Birth Rates, oh, this was

Simone Collins: shared with us from by a fan.

Malcolm Collins: Yes.

Simone Collins: Thank you.

Malcolm Collins: And it is going to reference a New York Times article. Those are written by Michael Leitz. So we'll be going between their quotes of the New York Times article and their commentary on these quotes of the New York Times article. Okay. Okay. And the New York Times article is like shockingly based.

So if we start with the New York Times article here, over the past few decades, Americans have redefined harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma. Expanding those categories to include emotional and relational struggles that were previously considered unavoidable parts of life. Yeah, adult. Children seem increasingly likely to publicly even righteously cut off contact with a parent.

This cultural shift has contributed to a new, nearly impossible standard for parenting. And then the other writer says, potential parents have become more and more atomized, cutting themselves off from their own parents and their future children. Mm-hmm. Leitz drives into this was the rise of estrangement between parents and their adult children.

Most of the time it's the offspring, not the parents who initiate the initial instr estrangement. Yeah. As Lebowitz rights in 2019, Carl Piman, a Cornell sociologist, found that 27% of adult Americans reported being exchanged from a family member. They're the true numbers, probably higher. The most commonly severed relationships were . Parent slash adult child. And in most cases it was the adult child who initiated the estrangement. Many psychologists, a physiologists believe this is becoming more common. Mm-hmm. Now note here, I love that they keep calling it the adult child. They don't mean this as an insult. Oh my gosh.

Simone Collins: Right. But they're not even thinking about it. But we, we've come to infantalize adults so much that we're just like. Ah, is it is a toddler child? Is it a teen child? Is it an adult child? Is it a geriatric child? Everyone's a child. Now, no one can handle themselves.

Malcolm Collins: Let's talk about like the few points of data that are really highlighted here so far.

Okay? Okay. First is that Americans have come to redefine harm, abuse, neglect, and trauma,

Simone Collins: right?

Malcolm Collins: This is absolutely true to mean things that people used to think were normal. A parent not affirming you for whatever you wanna believe about yourself, that's trauma. A parent not being with you all the time.

A parent allowing you to feel bad. You know, we have been people. Act guilty. Act guilty. We abuse our kids 'cause we use light non-pain. Corporal punishment. Which is absolutely wild considering you know, that we fight with our kids regularly just to get them fight because it's, my cultural tradition is fighting.

And my kids are, are very good. Even the girls very good at fighting. And they enjoy it. Oh, she

Simone Collins: loves it more than anyone else.

Malcolm Collins: A hundred percent. She starts it more than anyone else. And she thinks it's hilarious.

Yeah, she does.

So you get this, this I to pick

Simone Collins: the

Malcolm Collins: fight

Simone Collins: with a journalist yesterday.

Remember? What,

Malcolm Collins: what, what does she do? Poking

Simone Collins: her provocatively at dinner.

Malcolm Collins: Laughing, poking her. Oh, she's trying to bait that. Yeah. That was fantastic. That was, that was dur Spiegel, Dury Spiegel coming over to do a piece on us. She was very nice.

Simone Collins: I, I felt bad. I tried to distract her at the end so she could.

Malcolm Collins: So, so the point here is, is that these things, it is really bad that our society has redefined them. And as we've said before, the reason the urban monoculture has evolved to redefine them is because it helps to cut people off from their birth culture. Mm-hmm. And their. Natural support network.

And you see this throughout cults, an easy way to pull somebody from another culture is to convince them that that other culture is something that they should hate. And if you can recontextualize normal parts of growing up as abuse or neglect or trauma you know, you can, you can more easily do that.

Yeah. And, and here, I think more broadly like. I just find trauma culture more broadly so toxic. I think if anyone is ever talking to you about trauma, like for me, that's a huge red flag. Trauma can always be recontextualized. You actually, a journalist was talking to us. I. And they're like, well, you know, it sounds like you lived in like a really, like tough childhood.

Like, why are you like so bullish on your parents? And I was like, I, that my parents are who they are. Like I can choose to feel the however I wanna feel about them. Like why would I choose to internalize those things? I. A traumatic narrative when that does nothing but hurt me. And, and when I say this, you know, I, I left my family at 13 where I went to like a prison alternative and I never lived with again after that.

And a lot of people can be like, well, that sounds horrible. I'm like, whatever. Like I needed, you know, to, to, to grow tougher, right? And this is because I choose my narratives.

Simone Collins: Thought. Absolutely. Well, but also I think it, it, it's reflective of your tech puritan worldview, which is a deterministic worldview.

Mm-hmm. Where like if someone's wretched in some way, like that was, you know, it was predetermined, you know, that they, that was their product of accommodation, of their genetics and life experiences. Neither of, you know, they, which they had control over. Everything they did was out of free will. Absolutely.

But also, you know, they are what they are and so we just have to accept it. And you know, you, you don't,

Malcolm Collins: yeah. Well, I also find this idea of the, I mean, the second point here, which I find really interesting yeah. One is they are who they are. Like, learn to accept it. Like, yeah. If your parents you know, acted in line with who they are as people.

Mm-hmm.

I, I think. You know, you could say, well, I really detest who they are as a person. Or you can just be like, I understand why somebody with these beliefs in these perspectives would've acted in that way. Mm-hmm. And, and then you can look to selves and say, do you have an aspect of