In this episode of Family Matters, Simon interviews Erica Komisar – a clinical social worker, psychoanalyst, author, coach to parents, a mother, New Yorker and much sought after commentator across television, radio, and international conferences.
Erica stresses the vital importance of a child’s attachment to its parents, arguing that parents should do everything they can to be the ones raising their child – not early childcare, not the government, or others.
She explains that children aged 0-3 years of age are undergoing critical brain-development and in which children need one primary attachment figure—usually the mother, with attachment beginning in utero—to provide physical and emotional safety, stress buffering, and emotion regulation.
Erica notes that a person’s social-emotion system is about 85% developed by age three and that insecure attachment – where parents have not been close to their child during the first 12 months – is clearly linked to a child’s later mental health and resilience problems.
She argues modern culture promotes a “fantasy” of self-sufficient children, where they can just be left with anyone or any facility.
Simon and Erica discuss the growing role of government in encouraging parents to put careers first, and their children second. Erica strongly notes that government do not have the best interests of children in mind when they set policies. She notes that much of the modern culture elevates careers and GDP over relationships, pushes gender-neutral competition between men and women, and overloads women with impossible expectations. For the children, the culture is wrongly prioritising cognition ahead of social-emotional foundations, overstimulation and early academic pressure. As Erica puts it, it is like putting “shoes on before socks”.
Through her clinical work and research, she says separation from attachment figures elevates fear, the stress hormone cortisol, and survival-mode stress that can inhibit brain architecture, and warns that poor early attachment can impair empathy across generations.
Erica then shares with Simon and viewers suggestions for parents, urging they to provide bodily presence (touch, soothing voice, eye contact), reduce work if possible, and prioritising the idea of “being” with children rather than simply “having” them.
Erica also stresses that government’s need to be putting the child and parent first, enabling them to be together – and not what we are currently seeing in the likes of New Zealand, where money and effort is going towards separating the parents and child, so the former can return to work.
Simon wraps up the interview discussing Erica’s books, including her latest and just released book on children and divorce. In this, she notes divorce is now common and can be handled in more child-centred ways if parents collaborate and put children first.
For more details of Erica’s work:
Website: https://www.ericakomisar.com/
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/EricaKomisarLCSW/
X: https://x.com/EricaKomisarCSW
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/ericakomisar
Substack: https://substack.com/@ericakomisarlcsw
Books
Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters
Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling: Raising Resilient Adolescents in the New Age of Anxiety
The Child-Healthy Divorce
Show script auto-generated by Descript app:
FM – Erica Komisar
Simon O’Connor: Erica, welcome to the show. It’s look a real pleasure and I was thinking of the word to use. It is honor. Actually, it’s a real honor to have you on. Uh, the work that you lead is just fantastic. So again, welcome.
Erica Komisar: Thank you for having me.
Simon O’Connor: I’m very conscious actually as we’re recording today, uh, that your latest book, uh, has just landed, uh, probably with the, the magic of time zones, it’s landed in New Zealand, but not quite in the, the US. And I just want to signal that because as we talk, I’d love to come to the book, but I thought we should probably start, uh, with one of the, for me, and you know, your work better than anyone of course, is.
The whole notion of attachment, uh, the real importance, particularly of young children, zero to three, uh, to have attachment with their biological parents. And if I’ve read and heard you rightly as I have at ARC and at Aspire in Sydney recently, the attachment link of child to its mother. So I just wonder for the sake of our viewers and listeners, could you just talk us through the, you know, the key insights that you’ve had through your work and writing?
Erica Komisar: Well, I mean, some of the wisdom that I teach people is age old wisdom, but we have to have research for that age old wisdom now, which is that zero to three is a critical period of brain development where children require a primary attachment figure one person to make them feel safe and secure. It’s usually the mother, um, because attachment begins really in utero.
Um, it doesn’t mean that you can’t attach to a child you’ve adopted, um, but it it, it is a primary attachment figure. One person who is their go-to person to make them feel safe in the world, to buffer them from stress. To regulate their emotions. So we know that 85% of the right brain or the social emotional brain, um, the part of the brain that regulates our feelings and helps us cope with stress and helps us to read social cues.
This part of the brain, uh, is 85% developed by three years of age. And in that first three year period, it’s that feeling of emotional security or safety or what we call attachment security that lays the foundation for a child’s personality, but also for their mental health going forward. And we don’t talk about it because I think we don’t want to make mothers and fathers feel guilty.
You know, some have to work, some choose to work. And I think that, um, not talking about it and not understanding it doesn’t make the reality of it go away. That you know that children who are not getting that attachment security by 12 months of age because they don’t have enough of their mothers and fathers, particularly their mother’s physical and emotional presence are not doing well mentally, uh, when it comes to going to preschool and their early school years and into adolescence.
And we’re seeing this, that kids cannot manage stress and manage their emotions because they haven’t been given that foundation in the beginning.
Simon O’Connor: Mm-hmm. We’ve seen, certainly down here New Zealand is, is no exception as I say, children with, uh, increasing mental health issues. Certainly a lack of resilience.
Not all kids, some, some are just amazing, but a lot are struggling and yet the discussion doesn’t seem for many to, to lead back or to want to lead back to that parental presence. I mean, why do you think there’s been that. Resistance because as you said at the, the start, it’s sort of an ancient wisdom.
It’s it’s intuitive that the, the people who gave birth to the child or the mother rather and the, the, the dad, um, would want to be with the child and the child with them. And yet somehow we’re not linking that in modern society or not wanting to.
Erica Komisar: Well, I think it’s a fantasy. It’s the fantasy that you can raise children who are like self-cleaning ovens who don’t need much care and are born self-sufficient and that they’ll be just fine if you hand them over to strangers when they’re at their most critical and vulnerable neurological and emotional state. It is a fantasy, um, and it’s a fantasy that’s fueled by the idea that careers and being in the economy and making money are more important than, relationships are more important than children.
And I think it’s also fueled by this idea of gender neutrality, the idea that men and women are exactly the same and instead of a collaborative approach to having families, they’ve chosen a competitive approach – and they’ve been egged on by a society, which tells them. Everybody should work out in the world.
Everybody should be making money. You should be equal economic partners at all times. Um, and that’s a really strange message because what it does is it leaves behind children and it treats children like possessions or objects instead of human beings who have irreducible emotional and neurological needs.
And when we don’t meet them, those children are not okay.
Simon O’Connor: I’ve been struck actually with some of my friends who are women, um, seeing I’m married. I can’t say girlfriends, that would be very suspicious. Uh, but friends who are women. And I know your work is primarily child focused, but they say that the societal pressures on them that they’re meant to be a, a superwoman somehow to balance raising children and hold down a professional job all at once.
And they themselves, uh, say to me, they, they feel. Enormous pressure and then that flows into their relationships, both with husband and children.
Erica Komisar: Well, I mean, I think society has funneled all its anxiety and all its pressure into women. Um, you know, women can handle a lot, but they can’t handle two full-time careers and not break down. And that’s what we’re seeing. We’re seeing women feeling at the edge, at the brink of breaking down at all moments because what what’s asked of them is not actually humanly possible. Okay? It’s not possible. If you asked a man to have two more than full-time jobs, he would break down because we know that boys and men are more neurologically fragile. So we put all of this pressure on women. You know, it’s like when you drive over a bridge and it says no more than two, 2000 tons or two whatever, two tons. And you drive a 4,000 ton truck over it, you know? And so, um, I think we put this pressure on women to be super women.
I, I, I think it’s societal. It’s, it’s familial. Parents are putting pressure on women and their daughters, husbands are putting pressure on their wives to do everything all at once, but mostly women are putting pressure on women. Um, I mean, what’s happening is that I think women judge other women if they’re not out in the, you know, this comes from the second wave of feminism.
Women judge other women if they’re not out in the world as professionals at all moments of their lives earning money and competing with men instead of saying, um, life is filled with seasons. To respect and pay heed to the seasons of life. And there’s a time to be a really go-getting professional woman.
Um, there’s also a time to, to lay down your armor and be with your children and then, you know, maybe pick it up again when your children are, are, are grown and don’t need you as much. And so, you know, it’s, uh, it’s about this idea that, um, it’s, it’s an all or. All or none mentality. And it’s a binary mentality that unless women are out in the world working and earning money and professionals out in the world at all moments of their lives, then their failures.
And that’s a binary equation because the truth is that you can be very successful out in the world and respected in your career, but also choose to take time and be with your family and be a caretaker and follow your, your maternal instincts and, and then come back at some point when your children don’t need you as much.
Simon O’Connor: It’s one of the striking paradoxes to me, and I’m the amateur compared to you Erica, but in a world that doesn’t like binaries, supposedly it’s sort of part of the, the modern zeitgeist or philosophy and yet in this space as you’ve articulated it, is, it’s a very clear, I must either have career or child and you know, in this context, child off to a daycare centre and the politician or the former politician rather in me certainly recognizes that, uh, feminine tension, some of the most harsh critics of my female colleagues.
Uh, were other women and probably the other observation is a man can’t multitask at the best of times, let alone hold down two, two careers.
Erica Komisar: actually not good for you to multitask, it’s not good for you to multitask. Actually, it’s very, it’s very hard on you. You can do it temporarily, but it’s not good for you.
Simon O’Connor: I actually, I’m gonna use that when my wife, um, is, is rightly, um, joking with me. But that’s essentially, and is that for male and female, that it’s better to have a singular focus and then move to the next.
Erica Komisar: Yeah, it’s emotionally taxing and it’s actually contributed to a lot of the attentional issues we have today. You, if you put too much stress on a brain, uh, and ask too much of it, then it starts to short circuit, right? So the idea that we don’t know how to be still, we don’t know how to be mindful. We can’t be with children and be quiet with them and play with them. Um, you know, women will say I’m bored right away playing with their children.
I can’t sit on the floor with my children. It’s all coming from the same place, which is that we are now wired with the environment to be so overstimulated at all moments that we don’t know how to be still. We don’t know how to be relationally quiet and to connect. And it’s really, it’s problematic for children.
Bcause children live in a slow world. They live in a world that is quiet and slow and they’re not always quiet, but they need to live in a world that is less stimulating and can, can be attentionally, sort of, uh, geared towards them.
Simon O’Connor: For me, that’s another paradox. ’cause uh, it, it’s, our youngest is now 22, so there’s, there’s quite a gap. Um, but when I look at friends of mine and others who are sending their kids off the likes of childcare, it’s anything but quiet. It’s, it’s over to me. And again, please correct me on any of this, but it appears overstimulating that, you know, they’re already trying to give academic, uh, if you will, uh, aspects to the child rather than just let them. Play it. It seems we’re doing the opposite in modern society. I mean, is that your observation through your work and research?
Erica Komisar: So I always like to say that your social emotional development is like your socks and your cognitive development is like your shoes. You wouldn’t put your shoes on before your socks.
You put your socks on before your shoes. And what we’re doing now is we’re pressuring children before they’ve really developed. In terms of their social, social emotional brain, which, you know, the social emotional part of the brain allows us to deal with stress and frustration and all of these things that we need to deal with learning.
When you learn cognitively, it innately comes with a lot of stress and frustration. So if you’re forced to learn cognitively before you’ve developed the capacity to cope with frustration and to tolerate stress. Then you’re gonna break down, maybe not in the short term, but definitely in the long term. And that’s what we’re seeing in children is that forcing them to learn their reading, writing, and arithmetic before we’ve taught them about emotional safety, attachment, security, uh, the capacity to, to tolerate frustration. Offer them from stress in the beginning so they can incrementally learn how to cope with stress in the future.
Those are the gifts that you give to your children by being as present as possible in the first three years that last a lifetime. And when you don’t give them those gifts, they’re often deficient. It creates very frail, emotionally frail children who are more prone to breaking down at the first sign of adversity or stress.
Simon O’Connor: When you were speaking in Sydney recently, and again, thank you for what you were sharing you as, as I heard it, you spoke a little bit deeper around how children, particularly when they go into likes of childcare or they’re being detached, uh, from a parent, from a mom or a dad, that there’s is a, a heightened stress, uh, almost a, yeah, I can’t articulate it as well as you do, but the, the child is, is not just simply missing. Uh, the parent, but there’s a whole array of emotions and probably Is it chemical or hormonal things happening as well?
Erica Komisar: Well, it’s fear. So your brain is not meant to go into a survival mode when you’re very little. So under three years of age, we’re not meant to go into a survival mode because our parents are meant to buffer us from the stress that would put us into a survival mode and what we’re doing by separating very neurologically, emotionally and physically fragile infants and toddlers from their primary attachment figures are their go-to person for safety and security. What we’re doing is we’re elevating their stress levels, we’re elevating their, their stress hormones, their cortisol levels. And what happens with cortisol is that as the brain is developing and being architected in this critical period, stress inhibits the brain development.
So if we’re overly exposed to stress in those first three years, if we have very high cortisol levels, it inhibits our ability to cope with stress in the future. The less stress you are faced with and the more your primary attachment figure is there to help you process the stress you are exposed to with skin, to skin contact, eye contact, soothing tone of voice, um, physical affection, all of that helps children to accommodate to the distress of a stressful environment. If there is stress, if you lose that person in those first three years, who’s helping you to accommodate to those small amounts of stress, instead you expose them to large amounts of stress, you are um, basically disabling that child in the future to be able to cope with stress.
And that’s what we’re seeing in our kids. That everybody ranks on children and adolescents and says, oh, they’re so weak and they’re so frail and all these generations, and I hate when people say that because we’ve done it to them. The adults in the room have done it to them. It’s not something that just happened.
We made this happen. We crippled our children because we didn’t give them what they needed emotionally and physically in the beginning. And, and that’s, that’s on us, not on them.
Simon O’Connor: It is perhaps, again, the former politico in me who wonders why we don’t see the obvious answers, uh, in front of us because we have literally millennia of understanding and knowledge that again, the people who have given birth or the mother who’s given birth, the biological have by and large, um, are the ones to raise the child.
And yet when we see this lack of resilience, this fear that you speak of where we seem to be. Again, in our societies grasping for answers rather than looking at the most obvious one, which is children want to be with their parents, and I would expect parents generally would want to be with their, their child, but I think you’ve said earlier that society is sending a very different message and so the stress must not only be on the child, but I imagine the parents as well at times.
Erica Komisar: Well, so empathy. Is so we are wired to instinctually care for our children, but empathy is something that has to be grown and fertilized. And we’re not only not fertilizing empathy in our children when they’re little. Um, so when they’re grown, when they’re adults and they have their own children. What we’re raising is, um, empathically impaired children who become empathically impaired adults.
So if you’re not paying attention to your child’s distress and you’re not protecting them from the stress that causes distress, then you are basically telling them that their feelings don’t matter. You are impairing them empathically. And then those children grow into adults who can’t read the cues of their own children and can’t feel the pain of others, cannot feel the pain of their own children. You can damage instincts. I mean, instincts are not indelible. Um, they have to be nurtured. They have to be fertilized. They have to be cared for, and what we’re doing is damaging instincts. And so many young parents that I treat can, they, they feel something, but they’re not sure what it is and they can’t reach for it because it’s been so damaged and impaired.
Simon O’Connor: I mean that, that’s a tragedy within a tragedy as you reflect that, and again, I, I don’t work anywhere near your level, but for a variety of reasons. I’ve worked with people, families over the many, many years with different hats on and exactly that, and it was, gosh, this goes back about 30 years for me, was, was stunned coming across people, as you say, with the, the most basic.
Ah, almost for me, I’d say moral conceptions, but their ability to express how they feel and think it was quite warped and yeah, the, the trauma for some, but also, yeah, the lack of experience. They had not experienced these things in their own families. It’s quite, yeah, I mean, parents listening to this will be going well, what can we.
What can we do particularly in that zero to three, be it the mom or the dad in particular. But it can be, I mean, grandparents I suspect, uh, would fit into this, but I mean, what are, what are some of the things parents can do? I mean, what does spending time with a child look like practically? I mean, I was seeing something recently online, Erica, I think it, that you can’t believe just about anything you read online, but saying, well, working parents actually spend more time. With their children, uh, than someone at home, which had my wife’s head explode and me shaking mine. I mean, what does spending time with a child look like?
Erica Komisar: Well, first of all, don’t believe what you see on the internet. That’s what I would say. That’s the lesson of this podcast. Um, so you can be physically at home and be depressed. Or distracted or resentful, or you know, not, not emotionally present. So you can be physically there and be emotionally checked out. You cannot be emotionally present for a child if you are not physically there. Presence has very much to do with your body. It’s a bodily thing for babies and toddlers. It’s the ability to touch your parent.
It’s the ability to feel. It’s the skin to skin to hear your parents’ heartbeat and their breath. And so it’s very much a physical experience. So this, again, a lot of fantasy about children that you can somehow be miles away at a job or plane rides away and be emotionally connected to your child and not be physically there when they’re an infant and a toddler.
It’s a bunch of baloney, and I think we all know it is. It’s just that it’s an excuse, it’s a justification. It’s how we just justify not being present. But it is true that you can be there physically and not be there emotionally. Children need physical and emotional presence. Particularly in those first three years, but throughout childhood. I mean, you can’t just say, right, it’s three, they’re three years old and I’m done, and I’m outta here. The truth is that as long as you have children that needs you. And certainly they’re home in America till they’re about 18 and their brain doesn’t stop developing their social emotional brain till about 25 to 27 years old.
So children need you and so they need you physically and emotionally in those first 18 years. They don’t need you in the same way as they did zero to three. But we say adolescence is another critical period of brain development. So they need you. To process the world. The world is a very strange place, probably stranger than it’s ever been. More stressful, more things to process, more social issues, social drama, technology, you know, end of world scenarios. War. I mean, you need to be around for your children, or as Penelope Leach said, you probably shouldn’t have them.
Simon O’Connor: Yeah. Well, again, paradox is one of,
Erica Komisar: go ahead.
Simon O’Connor: Yeah. Paradox has been one of the words for me as we are talking today, because again, there are so many people, again, I’m thinking of particular people I know and they won’t mind me discussing their situation, not by name, but long and short, often having children later in life, uh, desperate to have children go into all sorts of lengths, including the likes of IVF, and then within weeks of having said, baby.
Off, off to early childcare and it’s so, I, part of me can’t understand that. I think
Erica Komisar: word is have, I think the word is, have you use that, have word. So there was a, a wonderful guru who, um, used the term, uh, ramdas. He was an American who went to, in India. He used, used this, this paradigm. He said, there are three pillars. There’s the being, the doing, and the having in life. He said, most people just do, do, do to have, have, have more stuff. He said, but the really important part of life and happiness and our existence on this planet and the meaning of life is the being. Mm-hmm. And so. Don’t have children if you don’t wanna be with your children, because it’s the being that matters, not the having.
You can adopt children and be an amazing parent because you’re, you’re a force, you’re a presence in their life. You know, so it’s not the having, it’s not the physically giving birth and having, it’s the being that really, really matters. And so, again, the, the fantasy that it’s the having children like their possession, like there a car or a vase or some beautiful object in your house that you can do anything with or leave on the shelf and come back at the end of the day and they’ll be exactly in the same position waiting for you.
This is a narcissistic fantasy, and this is disturbing to me.
Simon O’Connor: I, I actually love that. I think it’s quite a profound insight. I remember in my early years and philosophies, my background, that whole notion of being, we are so often either regretfully pondering the past or looking into the future that we’re not in the, in the presence and as you’ve explained here, particularly with the child, to yet you want to be a parent. I love it. I, I had not thought of it. That way and, and now critiquing my own language, um, I mean it’s, it’s, it’s tough out there at the moment. Again, you touched on this in, in Sydney that you know, it is very tough economic times society in the states here in New Zealand, uh, is geared towards both parents working in, in incomes and to the extent you can and from obviously your clinical experience. I mean, what is some well advice for want of a better word to people to go, look, it’s just so hard to be with my kid. I need to go and work. I mean, is there any sort of encouragement you might have for them?
Erica Komisar: You know, I don’t like to give up on parents. I know there’s a lot of therapists who say, oh, but it’s better for children to be with a caregiver who really loves being with them rather than a parent who doesn’t. And what I would say to that is I believe in the hopefulness and helping parents to heal. Meaning I don’t give up on parents so easily, and I don’t think parents should give up on themselves so easily, or their capacities. You know, there’s all of these articles and websites now. There was an article I think the other day that was really so sad for me. I think it was in the New York Times. I’m not sure about. Mothers who are resentful and wish they’d never had their children. And I’m thinking, okay, we’re really in a bad place right now. Um, if we are, um, you know, if we have so many mothers who are rejecting their own. You know, it’s one thing that to reject other people’s children, because if you’re not in the childcare field or in the psychology field, maybe other people’s babies aren’t of interest to you.
But to be so instinctually damaged that we don’t value our own children. We’ve really gone down the wrong path in society, and that’s, that’s where we are right now. I mean, parents would rather be, I think the statistic in the UK was 66% of parents if offered the opportunity for financial support from the government and emotional support from their families, uh, would stay home with their children.
In the early years, that still means that, you know, 36% or 30 30, you know, 34% were not, um. We’re not wanting to be with their children would rather, and in America it’s 60% of women would stay home with their children. That means 40% of women would rather be away from their children. So again, it is perfectly instinctually normal to not wanna care for other people’s children if children aren’t your thing.
But it is not instinctually normal to reject your own children, to not wanna be with your own. That means that we have damaged those receptors. We’ve damaged instinctual responses that we’ve had for thousands of years that have helped us to survive as a species. So that’s very concerning to me.
Now it is very hard economically for parents, and what I say to parents is that if there is any possibility, any, any, any possibility to be more with your children, work less or take time off or, you know, or, or you know, advocate with your governments, which is what I do. I go around the world and advocate for governments to get paid leave for up to 18 months.
You know, and you know if there’s any possibility of strategizing with your partner so you can do it less and, and, and really pare down your life in the years that your children need you the most. That is the greatest gift you will give your children far better than nicer stuff, or a bigger house or a nicer school, or the truth is that your presence is the thing that they want more than anything in the world.
Simon O’Connor: Again, I’m only one statistic, but it all echoes. I mean, I’ve been fortunate with my parents and my wife effectively, uh, stay at home and trained as an engineer, but she stayed at home. Just knowing when I look back, uh, that my parents picking my mom was around, made the difference. Didn’t have to be in the same room or could she could be outside hanging the laundry and me tearing up the house.
But you just knew they were there. And again, I think this is it deeply known and held within most of us. But again, society sends other messages and I’m pleased you mentioned the governmental side. Um, again, you spoke for me so articulately in Sydney, but here in New Zealand, I’m sure it’s the same in the states and elsewhere, but governments are putting enormous amounts of resource, uh, tax breaks.
Into the childcare side, doing all they can, uh, to facilitate the, usually the mom in particular back into work, child into childcare. And as Rachel and I talk about, it’s like co-parenting with, with the state. Um, you are saying that actually money should be directed more to help the, the parents and I’d say take the mother to stay at home if she wants to.
Erica Komisar: They don’t care. Governments don’t care about children. You have to care about your children because they don’t give a damn about your children. They care about the GDP. They care about you putting more money into the system. But don’t be fooled to believe that they give a damn about your children because they don’t.
Hmm. Governments are in it for as many workers as they can get into the system. They do not care about your children. So if you’re gonna rely on the government to care about your children, then that is also a fantasy. You have to care about your children. You have to do what’s right by your children in spite of the fact that the government doesn’t care about your children.
Simon O’Connor: Mm-hmm. Well said. As I, I’ve, I’ve come out of the political realm and I’ve, I’ve ping struck. I’m, I’ve become deeply cynical and I’ve only just turned 50. Um, is, is exactly that and what often governments will say of any color, be it the left or the right. Um, so much comes down to that personal responsibility and making choices not only for yourself, but yeah, for your kids.
They’re your children. They’re not the states. They’re not someone else’s. And yeah, I was struck to, um, you just mentioned earlier about what’s online and the messaging around children. I was talking to Katy Faust recently of all things Erica, about the in increase of divorce porn. Um, as she phrased it, a bit of a clear, which is take you through the likes of Instagram, uh, all this messaging about how bad husbands are and so forth, and. For me, as you spoke about what we’re seeing online around children. Oh, they’re a nuisance. They’re a problem. I’d prefer I wouldn’t have them. There’s all this, this negative messaging. I mean, there’s an aspect of that, particularly for parents to surround themselves with more positive affirmations in terms of their friends and connections.
Erica Komisar: You know, I, and I know Katie, so I know how she speaks about this passionately as I do. Um, you know, I, I think that, well, you know, I’ve written a book about divorce, which comes out today, and, and the book really talks about, I mean, divorce is a reality. 50% of couples will divorce, right? So we know that it’s a reality. And so I, I think to deny the reality of divorce. Is also a fantasy. There’s a lot of myths and fantasies out there. Um, the question is how do you do it? Understanding it’s not ideal and understanding in the end, it does do harm to children, but there are ways to mitigate the harm if parents are mindful and they understand what children need developmentally and emotionally and they do the right thing.
And I think often parents are in such pain, women and men. So it’s not just women speaking badly about men. There’s a lot of men speaking badly about women. And you know, it’s, um, it’s, it’s the disheartening disillusionment. In the trust of permanent, which both affects the couples involved, but most importantly, their children.
I mean, what we know is that children that come out of a divorce situation, even if it’s handled well, the illusion of the permanence, romantic relationships is damaged forever. Right. Because they know that it, it is, that it is not necessarily a permanent, uh, structure, right. Marriage, uh, institution. So, I mean, but I think there are, are ways to soften it and mitigate it and help children through it. So they still trust. So they come out with emotional security, so they come out with the ability to regulate their emotions. Um, and it’s not a given that a child who goes through a divorce is, is damaged indelibly, and can’t get married and can’t have children.
But the truth is that I think most parents, um, are so self-focused when they’re going through the pain of a divorce, that they’re also not thinking about their children. Um, they’re not working together and collaborating and cooperating and doing what’s best for their children developmentally and emotionally and based on age.
They do what’s best for themselves and they talk about things like fairness and 50 50, and it’s very damaging to children. Children have to be at the center. If you’re gonna get divorced, which 50% of couples are going to, then you better put your children first. So hopefully this book will help parents, uh, to, to do what is best for their children, not necessarily in the moment what feels best for them, but in the long run, what’s best for everyone.
Simon O’Connor: Well, that’s why I think it’s gonna be a great resource. I have to talk about it in the present tense because as you say, it’s only just been released. It’s the Parents’ Guide to Divorce, how to protect your child’s mental and emotional health through a separation or divorce. Of course, saying that for the viewers and
Erica Komisar: in Australia. Yeah, in Australia it’s actually got the original title. The original title is a Child Healthy Divorce and that the Parents Guide Divorce is the American title/, and if you ask me why they took the word healthy out. It’s because we’re so litigious in America. They couldn’t have the word healthy in the title really.
But that is the original title is the UK and Australia. I, I believe that in New Zealand you’re getting the uk, I’m not sure, but it’s in America. It’s called the Parents Guide to Divorce. But in the UK and Australia, and I’m guessing New Zealand, I’m not sure. I think it’s called a Child Healthy Divorce.
Simon O’Connor: A Child Health, which
Erica Komisar: is its original.
Yeah.
Simon O’Connor: Isn’t that something I must say is, is always one of my impressions, Erica, when I travel to the states and I do frequently that about every half mile is a sign for a lawyer. It’s, it’s a very litigious place.
Yeah.
Erica Komisar: Yeah. I mean, I mean, I, I mean, listen, a parent’s guide to divorce. Tells you what it is, but the, the truth is that it was called a child healthy divorce for a reason.
Because there are healthier ways to go through a divorce and you wanna go through it in the healthiest way possible for your child.
Simon O’Connor: And I think that’s why it’s great there is that resource. As you said a little earlier, you know, divorce is not ideal, but it’s a reality and so we need to confront it, um, and having resources like your book.
I think will help. And I’m not just here to put wind in your sails and praise you for that, but you know, when you’re going through a divorce, um, from what I’ve observed, uh, not for self, but through others, incredibly intense. And of course people become very self-focused, forgetting the child. So the idea, they can have a book and go, okay, here’s what we can, can do. Because it’s certainly one of the myths I’ve come across is that, oh no, the children will be fine. The divorce actually was better for us. It’s like, no. The, the kids are picking up on a lot of what’s happening often, even what’s unsaid.
Erica Komisar: What I’m hoping is that people will take this book into their mediation sessions and to their lawyers and will say, these are the ways we wanna go about going through this process. And so it’s not just for parents going through a divorce, it’s also for lawyers, divorce lawyers and mediators and judges, and anyone who’s doing, um, co-parenting coaching or, you know, it’s really meant to educate the system because it is a system. Once you enter that system, you have to know that the system has its own priorities and it’s not necessarily what’s best for children.
Simon O’Connor: Which I think is actually a great place to begin wrapping up because I think an underlying thread or theme you’d mentioned like the government earlier, not, doesn’t have the child’s interest at heart and the divorce process and so forth. It’s the parents, as you’ve said, from that guru. It’s being, uh, and being there.
And so Erica, I’m just look so grateful, uh, for your time. Uh, I have, as I said at the start, have always appreciated not only what you’ve written, but how you’ve. Spoken at the various conferences. In fact, actually, very quick question. Typical me as I’m wrapping up. What drives you into this space? ’cause I know you’ve, you’ve attract a lot of a program from people who don’t like this being discussed. I mean, was there a particular, uh, moment or a client or what, what is it that drew you to, to speak so profoundly and beautifully into this space for the sake of our children.
Erica Komisar: Okay. Well, when I was a young therapist, a social worker, before I was even a psychoanalyst, just the beginning of my career, um, I was seeing this uptick in mental illness in children where children were being diagnosed and medicated at earlier and earlier ages. And then I started to connect the dots in my practice to seeing that the children who were doing the least well were the children who didn’t have that. Deep connection, that emotional security and attachment security and whose parents were the least involved in their lives. And the children who were doing the best were the children whose parents were emotionally and physically available. And then I started looking at all of the neuroscience research and the epigenetics and the attachment research and, and I read thousands of pieces of research before I ever wrote this book. I researched this book for 13 years, really before I wrote it. And so, and, and, and it was. And I also got to see in that 13 years, the increase in the mental illness epidemic and, and how it was connected to a shift away from prioritizing children, towards prioritizing ourselves, our individualism, our self self focus, and also our careers. And so it really became sort of, uh, it, it came organically outta my practice. Clinically, what I was seeing.
Simon O’Connor: Well, as I keep saying thank you, not only for clearly what you’re doing for individuals there at your practice, but for speaking and speaking into an environment which is, is often hostile. But I am again honored and really grateful that you’ve made, uh, the time all the way from New York to, to speak to us down here in New Zealand.
So thanks for being part of the show, Erica.
Erica Komisar: Thank you for having me.
