Welcome back to Significant Others. I'm Liza Powell O'Brien. In our last episode, we learned

about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father, Sir Leslie Steven, who was a

complicated man to say the least. When I was researching this episode, I couldn't help but be

struck by how Sir Steven's approach to parenting was practically an inversion of the kind of thing

we see today. So I wanted to talk it through with one of the premier experts on modern parenting

Julie Lithcott-Hames, author of the books How to Raise an Adult and Your Turn, How to Be an

Adult, which is now available in paperback. Julie, thank you so much for talking with me.

I want to start with this idea of access, which is something I noticed in this somewhat

tortured relationship between Virginia Woolf and her father. Is there a sort of guiding

principle for you in terms of finding that balance between giving our kids access to all the

things they need to succeed and then exposure to things that might light their fire in a positive

way? Well, yeah, I think that's it, Liza, in a nutshell, the fact that balance is required,

that we don't want to be, and I think nobody listening would be in danger of underserving

our kids by providing them with nothing, neither resources nor hope nor opportunity. Nobody's,

I mean, people who find themselves in that circumstance are likely dealing with their own

poverty, mental illness, systemic issues that are impeding their ability to show up for their kids.

The other side of the spectrum is problematic for completely different reasons when we over

attend and overhandle, give them too much that they could have gotten for themselves,

solved too much that they could have tried to solve for themselves,

plan the path for them when this is their life and they ought to be planning it themselves.

When we overdo it out of an abundance of caution and intention to secure a certain future,

we undermine their agency, we undermine their resilience, they can't continue to grow chronologically,

...