Erica Komisar: A psychoanalyst, social worker, and parenting expert with over 30 years of clinical practice. She is the author of 'Being There' and 'Chicken Little' and writes on parenting for the Wall Street Journal.
What this episode covers
Komisar makes a research-backed and deliberately controversial case that the first three years of life (plus adolescence) are critical windows of brain development, during which a child needs a consistent, emotionally present primary attachment figure, usually the mother. She argues that daycare, sleep training, and parental absence raise children's cortisol and prematurely activate the amygdala, contributing to attachment disorders, anxiety, depression, and rising ADHD diagnoses. She frames ADHD largely as a stress response rather than a genetic disorder, and contends mothers and fathers play biologically distinct, non-interchangeable roles. The conversation extends into infertility, falling birth rates, the crisis of purpose among young men, the testosterone effects of caregiving, paid parental leave policy, and the harms of screens and social media. She closes with her own story of a loving but emotionally dissociated mother.
The guest's own work
Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters
Erica Komisar
“I collected research in epigenetics and attachment theory and neuroscience and wrote my first book Being There”— Erica Komisar
Chicken Little: The Sky Isn't Falling, Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety
Erica Komisar
“It's called Chicken Little, The Sky Isn't Falling, Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety. If that isn't a mouthful.”— Erica Komisar
Also referenced (named, not recommended)
Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood
Fred Rogers
“you want to sit and watch a Mr. Rogers when your baby is two together, a rerun of Mr. Rogers' Neighborhood, that's fine, but no technology.”— Erica Komisar
Inception
Christopher Nolan
“There was a movie, I think it was called Inception, where you could get stuck in a paradigm. You could get stuck in this fantasy”— Erica Komisar
Big reveals from this episode
- Claims daycare is 'so bad for their brain,' increasing aggression, behavioral problems, and attachment disorders.
- Publicly disagrees with friend Jonathan Haidt, saying the youth mental-health crisis predates social media.
- Declares 'America sucks' for being one of the only countries without paid parental maternity leave.
- Calls the standard medication-first treatment of ADHD 'malpractice.'
- Asserts there is no genetic precursor to ADHD, depression, or anxiety, only a 'sensitivity gene.'
- Says a father staying home 'has to learn how to be a mother,' and a child needs a mother figure and a father figure.
- Says the modern feminist movement has something 'vengeful' about it and has taken men's purpose away.
- Reveals her own mother was loving but would dissociate, 'like sand that slipped through my fingers.'
Worth remembering
- One in five children in the US (one in six in the UK) will develop a serious mental illness in childhood.
- 85% of the right brain is developed by three years of age.
- A UK study found mothers wake to a baby's cries while fathers sleep through; fathers wake to rustling leaves (predatory threat).
- Michael Meaney's licking-and-grooming research showed nurtured animals became more stress-resilient and passed that on generationally.
- Between 2000 and 2018, ADHD diagnoses in the UK rose roughly 20-fold.
- Schizophrenia and bipolar have genetic links, but anxiety, depression, and ADHD do not, per Komisar.
- She defines depression as preoccupation with past losses and anxiety as preoccupation with future losses.
- Over 60% of university and graduate students are now women; men marry at their educational level or below.
- A Philippines study of 624 men found new fathers had a roughly 30% drop in morning testosterone.
- Screens raise dopamine in an adolescent's brain tenfold compared to an adult's.