Hi, and welcome back to the Carol Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. There's a book that I love called Stumbling on Happiness. It's one of the few books that really change the way I see the world, see myself, see experiences and memories and dreams for the future. In the book, psychologist Daniel Gilbert argues that we assume that what makes us happy today will make us happy in the future too. We don't imagine all the things that may happen to
us that could change our perspective present. You knows very little definitively about what future you will desire. One thing about me is that I never wanted to get married or have children. My three kids love hearing that story. I never aught at babies or day dreamed about my wedding. I've written before that I pictured myself at eighty, alone and fabulous in sequins and false eyelashes, smoking cigarettes at
a hotel bar. The thought of the kind of commitment that kids require kept me up at night.
I wanted to be free.
I wasn't into tattoos and I wasn't into babies.
The permanence was not for me.
And the thing is I was always with really good guys. I look back at my exes and I'm generally proud to have picked them, but they were still all wrong for me. A question I get a lot from single women who don't want to be is how to pick better people. But the truth is that even if you're not into jerks or bad boys or whatever, the person can still be wrong for you. Had I married any of those really great men, I would have been settling. There was a hit book a number of years ago
called Marry Him. The Case for Settling for Mister Goodenough by Lori Gottlib. A woman wakes up at forty and realizes she should have just settled for someone along the way.
I am very.
Much opposed to this. This argument tries to course single women into pairing off with whomever will have them, so long as they achieve the goal of getting married and having babies. This advice is framed as as courageous, as if telling a woman to settle for an imperfect mate is hard hitting and bold, when in fact it is the advice equivalent of describing yourself as too much of a perfectionist when asked about your negatives on a job interview.
It's a cop out.
This line essentially tells single women who wish to be married but aren't that their problem in landing a mate is that they are too choosy. For most people, that is simply not it. I'll get into more about this about how settling is a cop out and what you should do instead in the next episode, but here I
want to talk about the kid part. I said in the last episode that I love studies on relationships, but I actually think studies on whether children make you happy and whether you should have them are completely flawed because it's impossible to put a numerical value on creating and nurturing life. Children are complicated. You want to get away from them, yet miss them when you do. It's difficult when they depend on you, and it's difficult when they
stop depending on you. So many parents have grown children will stay a wistful go by so fast while you're in the throes of diaper changes and sleepless nights that there develops an understanding that clearly there's more to it than your happiness level on any particular day. A few years ago, I wrote about a really interesting three year study out of UCLA which tracked thirty two families and videotape their every moment. What they found was just a
horror show of typical family life. You know, picture your mornings trying to get your kids out the door, and how that would look to somebody you know who doesn't have kids. Oh, you know, terrible, right. The families bickered, they yelled at each other, and behaved much like ordinary families do. A twenty ten New York Times story about the project described the lives of the subjects as quote a fire shower of stress, multitasking, and mutual nitpicking end quote.
Some of those people who conducted the study were horrified. One guy, Anthony P. Greach, a post doctoral fellow involved in the study, said it was quote the very purest form of birth control ever devised ever end quote. But then the inevitable Five years later kicker in the story, doctor Greich and his wife have just had their second child.
Present.
You cannot predict what will make future you happy. That's what stumbling on happiness is about. Other people with their kids will only show you the negatives of having children, as it's just impossible to see the positives from afar. But that's true for a lot of things. Going to school is hard, having a job is hard, and we're expected to do it. In fact, we're raised with that expectation being the one true path. And you can get off that path, sure, but it's going to come at
our risk to your happiness. The same is true for having kids, and we should say so. That's why it's so important to draw the connection for your own child as to why they should get married and have children, and portray it as part of the success sequence for them.
My youngest son asked me just today whether I think all three of my kids will be successful, and I took that opportunity to tell him that while success to him might be playing for them Dallas Cowboys' success to me is my kids getting married to people they love and having families. The book Stumbling on Happiness concludes spoiler alert with the idea that we can't predict what will make us happy, so we have to lean into the advice of people who have done the things that we're
considering doing. We should also listen to people who love us and know what actual happiness looks like for us, even if we can't see it way into the future. Hey, I might still you know, wear false lashes and take up smoking when I'm eighty and sitting at the hotel bar. But the image I saw from my own happiness has changed significantly. Tell your children that their plan can change too. Coming up next an interview with Abby Roth. Join us after the break, Hi, and welcome back to the Carol
Markowitz Show on iHeartRadio. Our guest today is Abby Roth. Abby is the creator of Classically Abby, a YouTube channel and lifestyle brand that teaches about classical living and traditional values. Abby is a classically trained opera singer with a master's degree and professional study certificate from the Manhattan School of Music. Abby transitioned to YouTube from opera when she realized the
importance of sharing how to live a conservative life. She has a ton of followers on YouTube, Instagram, Twitter, and Abby is spreading her message to young women and men everywhere.
Thanks so much for being on Abby.
Thank you so much for having me. So happy to be here.
So how do you describe what classical values means?
Yeah, So, what I always say is that classic living is an outgrowth of traditional values.
So if you believe that.
There are certain things that are true and are based in reality, and you live your life out in that way, then you will necessarily.
Be living classically. So men and women are different.
For example, no way, if you believe that, which I mean funny enough, that's a traditional value these days.
But let's say it is. Then as a woman.
For example, you are going to be living a classical life because you're going to be accepting reality and you're going to be living your life within those boundaries. And if you, for example, think that that it's important for people to present themselves, well, that's a classical way of living, is presenting yourself well when you're out and about and not always dressing in the very common and modern way
of dressing a leisure and never brushing your hair. So I mean guilty, but yes, all of us are guilty sometimes.
Don't get me wrong. I've been there, I've been there. I'm a ball.
But I think as a general rule, right, like, if you are embracing those traditional values, then you're going to be living them out as well.
Right.
So I saw Babylon b story recently that reminded me of you, and the headline was woman wishes there was some kind of job that would let her work from home and do stuff she enjoys like baking, sewing, hanging out, with her kids. That's amazing you've even posted, I think, and I'm sure once that you feel societal pressure to not, you know, be a stay at home mom. So how do you reconcile that?
Yeah, I think one of my least favorite sayings or phrases in the English language is fulfill your potential.
I always hate that phrase because what does that mean.
I mean, fulfilling your potential very much, very often into day's day and age feels like trying to show kind of outwardly how smart you are and prove to other people what you can accomplish, as opposed to what is your potential.
It's what you can actually be.
So if your potential and fulfilling your potential is being at home and raising your children, then that's the best place.
For you to be.
And I think you can feel really good about that. So that's how I've learned to reconcile it. I mean, I think that that's always been my greatest fear. Am
I fulfilling my potential? And in the last year or so, I've really explored that idea because I didn't want to ever feel like I was, you know, doing something wrong with my choices, and I've recognized and grown through that and realized that there's no place, at least for me and I believe for many women than being with my son, raising him and giving him a strong foundation.
Where do you think that pressure comes from? Like I have this joke that you know, and I've said this on the show before, but you know, when people say society says, I'm always like, did your mom say that?
Like?
Was it your mom?
But was it?
I mean?
Where do you feel like that?
You know?
The potential thing?
Is it?
College? Is it our parents?
Like?
I know exactly what you mean, but you know I feel it even not being a stay at home how I feel like, am I living up to my potential?
So yeah, I get it? But where does it come from?
I think? I mean.
For me, I always think things stem from feminism, and feminism is an outgrowth of Marxism. So if you kind of look at the later elements of feminism, right, initial feminism, equality, equity, feminism, voting, that's.
All good, Right, we can all recognize.
Christina Hofstluers kind of breaks this down for us in whostole feminism. But then as we get into like, you know, sixties style feminism, then we're seeing people talk about how the house, being at home is a concentration camp. Right, That's what Betty free Dan said in her book and in the Feminine Mystique. So we know that there's kind of this idea that women at home was a waste of potential. Right, Men got to go out and work,
got to go out and work. And I always put that in quotation marks because for many men wanted to do that, right exactly, many men would not choose that lifestyle. But now we see that going back to that era, there was a real push for women to be out and that being a mother was holding you back. And I feel like even in the New Barbie movie that line that made me so upset that everyone was like, that's.
So emotional, and I was thinking to myself, are you kidding me?
Which was mothers like, mothers hold themselves back so their daughters can go forward.
And I was like, what are you talking about? In what world?
So I think that that's really, at least for our generation, where that came from, where that stems from. And if your mom was raised in that era, I think that she probably had a similar a similar thought. Now, my mom and I are super super close and we can talk about all these ideas really openly. But she was the primary breadwinner and my dad was a stay at home dad, so you know, I was raised a little bit about a philosophy of like women should go out
and work. And this has been a big shift for our relationship that I'm like a big proponent of being at home. And thank god, because she is who she is, she's always prioritized family, so she can really wrap her head around it, even though it wasn't the exact style that I'm doing.
Right, that's yeah, that's really interesting. I didn't see the Barbie movie, but my like, you know, one moment, a proud moment of parenting is that my thirteen year old daughter, who you know, dressed up in pink, went to see it with her friends, walked out of there like.
What did I just watch?
You should be proud?
And she said that like she felt very like hit over the head with a lot of the concepts, Like they kept using the word patriarchy over and over again, and she was like, I get it, the patriarchy all.
Right, like exactly exactly.
So what will you teach your kids about their future options?
Because it's interesting because you know, when I think about this.
I look, I definitely say to my daughter, like, you could do whatever you want.
She's brilliant, and you know, she's really into the sciences and she's into robotics, and I'm like, you want to go into that world, like, you can totally do that, but listen, if you want to be a stay at home mom, I'll support that one hundred percent. But I don't ever say that to my sons.
I have two sons, and you know.
I don't mention that they have all these options. So do you feel like you kind of say the same or you will say the same to all your kids me.
And I'll you know, I'm sure I'm gonna mention this throughout and later as well. For me, family is always the priority. So that's the thing I want to instill in my children is.
If your dreams your dreams, and.
I'm putting a lot of things in quotes, I realizing, but if your dreams come at the cost of your family, and you decide that your mission outside of your family is more important than your mission of family, You're doing things wrong. At least that's what I'm going to teach both my daughters and my sons.
So for my sons.
You know, it's going to look a little different because generally men are the providers. And you know, it used to look different, It used to look different what that dynamic looked like. But in today's day and age, men are the providers most of the time, and men also thrive when they are in that position. A man who is making less than his wife.
Often there is stress and struggle in that relationship. So you know, I mean, but.
My husband always is like, I would have no problem with that. You go ahead and make more money than me. I will somehow make it as a man.
Yeah, I do think that there are some more men who are getting open to it. But as a general thing, I think that men have a pride thing about it. So for my sons, I want to raise them with the idea of your job is to provide in a way that you enjoy and inspires you, but that doesn't come at the cost of your family. And for my daughters, it's I want you to choose a job that you can you can.
I don't ever want you.
To struggle with the self cost fallacy. So what that means is I don't ever want them to choose a job where they put their time, effort, and money into it, and then when they do have children, they get to a point where they're like, oh, I want to I want to stay home with my kids, but I just sunk this time, effort and.
Money and they can't. They can't square those two things.
And so a lot of women I know have either gone back to work even when they.
Didn't have to and didn't want to, but felt like they.
Should, right right, I know I had this degree for you know exactly. And the thing is, you can't know how you're going to feel about having kids until you
have them. And I do think it's a wonderful thing to devote your time and energy to something before you have children, Right Like I built the brand of Classically Abby before I had my son so that I could have the flexibility after I had my son to make one video a week, not four, right, And you know, it's nice to have that time before you do have children,
so you can build these things for yourself. But I think for me, I really want to instill in my daughter's choose a career that has flexibility, and whether that means a career that you can step away for twenty years and be a full time stay at home and come back into the workforce and be better than ever.
Like nursing.
That sounds great, but don't choose something that's going to box you in that you're going to be in debt, that you're going to feel really bad about yourself if you step back then and then not be able to make different choices.
We're going to take a quick break and be right back.
On the Carol Marcowitch Show, there was that pupil I think it was April where like some crazy number of Americans I don't have the number in front of me right now, but it was like I wouldn't say forty percent, like don't think it's that important for their kids to have kids, or they don't they don't stress the importance of like you should have children to through their children.
I just think that's like societal suicide. And I don't understand it.
So I you know the perspective of family first, whether or not you're a man or a woman, and then you know.
The rest later. I think it's just so obvious.
Also just the fact that married people make more money because it makes so much sense, like when you're comfortable in your home and you're in your life and you're not like swiping on Tinder at.
Night, you make more money because you're just settled.
So the idea of like pursue money not family is so backwards to me.
But how do we you know, how do we change that?
How do we get everybody on, you know, the Abbey plan of ps do family first?
I mean, I hope that over time people realize that, you know, there's more happiness to be had in your family than there is in these these kind of silly pursuits of traveling and food and like all of these things that we spend way too much money on, like you were saying, the ways that we save and make more money when we're married, as opposted before. Don't get me wrong, Traveling is fun, going to restaurants is fun.
Having a cocktail every now and then is great, but like that doesn't last, and if you come home to no one, you're not going to feel great the next day or even that night. And I've I mean, I think anyone who who wasn't married at twenty knows that feeling right. You've been twenty four and I got married
at twenty four. You've been twenty three twenty four and gone out and hang out with your friends and done fun things, and then at the end of the night you're like, but there's no one waiting for me at home, and that's a really sad It's a sad thing. And I think that we are encouraging people to.
Do that, at least not us.
But you know that societal narrative is that people should go out and just heathenistically like, go out and do these things.
And my.
Argument is no, Actually, you're going to feel better, you're going to feel more fulfilled, and you're going to feel happier if you actually pursue a family, have a husband who loves you, have children who depend on you. These are all really positive things and they build on one another and it makes your life feel worth it as opposed to just kind of slipping through your fingers. I don't think that anything makes your life.
Feel more.
Full than have a family, and otherwise you're constantly just seeing time pass slip by.
Right and traveling with kids. I know people think it's terrible, am I It might are thirteen, ten and seven. Now it's magical.
It's so good.
They're finally like at the age where they just like like everything and enjoy like seeing stuff and they're like still talking about the summer trip we took and it's not you know, it really is completely different and so much better. Which leads me to a question that I ask all of my guests, and I think that, you know, maybe you've touched on some of this, but what do you think is our largest cultural or societal problem in America? And do you think it's solvable?
So I think that it's kind of a two part question for me. There's a book I recently read which is kind of I've been touching on, called Take Back Your Family by Jefferson Beski, and I highly recommend it if anyone is looking for a book to read. It really does talk about how the family has broken down and how the nuclear family, which people kind of mysdifine these days, is not the ideal. We don't want a family that is completely separated from the extended family.
We want a family that on itself.
And again, we view our mission as the family as opposed to our mission outside of the family. And so I think what we're facing today is this very individualist culture. Carl Truman also talks about this just how you know, expressive individualism has really taken its toll on people, and we are who we are in the context of others. So my fear for our culture is that we have gotten to individualists and we don't view family as the core.
And when family breaks down, you start to see I mean, if fatherless homes, of course, I mean, that's a horrible outcome for the children. There's poverty, there's more crime. You have women kind of issuing their responsibility as mothers in
favor of being girl bosses. And then you've got the idea that Erica Kamasar talks about of just the first three years being so important for young children's developing minds, and mothers drop off their kids at six weeks at daycare, you know, and so these kids are developing traumatic responses from really young ages that extend into adulthood. So I think that as we make family less important, we're seeing the individuals, ironically, who are supposed to be having individualists individualism,
these individuals are suffering and making worse choices. So my dream for America is that we do go back to valuing family and making family the most important hub for all of for everyone. And I think that there is a chance that this can go back to that, especially through faith. I think that faith communities really do start there, start with family, and.
That has been.
As people continue to have a lot of kids, because usually people who are religious have a lot of children, then their children will do the same thing, and that can kind of shore up the weakness in the family structure, and hopefully that can influence people who are struggling with family who aren't religious and they can see, Okay, yeah, this is a better way to do things.
So in that same Pew study that I mentioned, when people were saying they don't really care if their kids have kids, people also don't care if their kids follow their religion. I mean, the whole study like really made me angry at everything.
I like the.
Idea that you know, I'm going to not tell my kids, I would like you to follow our religion and I want you to have kids, Like that's to me, it's like every day in our household, like you know, So it's just I don't understand what's happening. Also, I was on a panel with Rika Kamasar a few months ago, and she spoke about the trauma that people, you know, the babies end up having because they're left without their primary caretaker. And I mean the crowd was just completely
shocked by her findings. Was it was really interesting. She you know, said some things I think people hadn't really heard before. But so you are a mom, you have another on the way, you have this amazing brand. Is that okay to say yeah another yeah, yeah, zero weeks away social away from getting That's That's actually partially why I wanted to do this interview now, because I was like, she is going to not be around for a while.
So, I mean, do you feel like you've made it?
So it's such an interesting question. I I definitely. Here's what I'll say. I have everything that I want out of life. Like I'm so blessed that that that I can say that right, Like I've I've got an amazing husband, I have an amazing son, I have another son on the way, Like I live near my family. I have a brand that I love and that I get to do on my own schedule. So in that sense, one hundred percent, like I've built this life that I feel
so blessed for. The only thing that I would say I wish I had a little bit more of is a is a slightly bigger platform, just because I think that you know, YouTube, first of all, doesn't love conservatives, in case I knew that, but you know, they can kind of tamper down your views. So even if you have a rather large platform, only a very small percentage
of them are seeing what you do. But I think the that's really all I would want more is just a larger platform to reach more people, because I think there are more women who would benefit from hearing like, yeah, you're doing the right thing, don't feel bad about yourself, that kind of thing.
But other than that, I'm good. I feel like I've made it.
I'm so happy with my life and I'm so happy with with what I have.
Do you feel like you live a public life.
I sometimes get recognized, but less so lately. When I lived in Virginia, people recognize me a lot, probably because we were right outside DC, and that's like more.
Of the area that would recognize what everybody knows whoever exactly.
Yeah, but I do sometimes get recognized, I would say, for the most part, no, which is actually nice because, as you mentioned at the very beginning of this interview, if I do have a day where I'm not looking my best and I'm not looking classic, no one notices and That's nice because when that, yeah, that's happened to me where I've been recognized and I'm like, oh, classically abby looking, not to the best.
I find that very hard to believe. I've never seen you looking anything but classic.
Very sweet.
So and to hear with your best tip for our listeners on how they can improve their lives. I would like to ask people that because I think it gives a real range of thoughts for our listeners on like something that they could do to you know, improve their life today or in the future.
It doesn't have to be tall.
So here is my answer to that.
And if you can make it happen, make it happen, move near to your family, move closer to your family if you can. It is a game changer for us.
It was, you know.
I as soon as we got pregnant with my first son, I said to my husband, if we're going to have an easy time, we need to be near family. And it has been a huge blessing to us to have my parents here, to have my brother here, to have my sister here, Like it's just so wonderful to have that support system. And I see the people around us who don't and it's really hard, and so I would say, if you can make it work, if you can find a way to make it work, do it.
That's really great. I mean we raised our kids.
I mean they're still young, but in the first few years in New York, and my mom was over every single day, and you know, we never even talked about it. She's Russian. She just started coming over a second kid was born. She's like, oh, you're not doing well. I'm going to be here every day now. So I really like that tip. Thank you so much for coming on Abby. This was fantastic. She is classically Abby. Follow her on all the platforms.
She's really great.
Thank you so much for having me.
Thanks so much for joining us on The Carol Marcowitz Show. Subscribe wherever you get your podcasts.