Jessica Ocean on Parenting Models

Jessica Ocean is on X, as is her husband Malcolm Ocean.

Divia (00:01)

Hi Jessica! Thanks for coming on. Is your name Ocean now? You changed it?

Jessica Ocean (00:03)

Hey. Yeah, it's almost legally ocean. It'll be legally ocean pretty soon. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you.

Divia (00:11)

Congratulations. And also, happy birthday. It happens to be your birthday, and you're taking the time anyway. And I think you're about to have a baby, is that right?

Jessica Ocean (00:19)

Yeah. Yes. Hopefully not in the next day or so, but that could theoretically happen sometime in the next couple of weeks. Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. Yeah.

Divia (00:26)

You

Congratulations on that too.

Yeah, so I haven't known Jessica's super long, but I've known Malcolm, Jessica's husband, for a long time. And I think maybe you first reached out on Twitter when you either were pregnant or gonna have a baby or something to talk about that type of stuff. Is that right?

Jessica Ocean (00:40)

Mm

Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, that would have been a couple of months ago.

Divia (00:52)

Yeah. And I was pretty interested in talking to you because it seemed like you were trying to really, I don't know, like figure out what parenting is about, including from people who have larger families, including from like sort of observing a bunch of people and talking to different people, which is, has been a hobby of mine for a while. I don't know. I'm very good at it, but I have tried, trying to do it for many years and I don't meet too many other people that are also trying to do that. So that's, that's some of why I wanted you to.

Jessica Ocean (01:08)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah

Yeah.

Divia (01:21)

wanted to have you on the podcast and.

Jessica Ocean (01:23)

Yeah, I don't really know why other people don't do it. seems, but anyways, I'm sure they don't, but yeah.

Divia (01:29)

Yeah, I often wonder. It seems like a natural thing to me to do, but I can imagine various good reasons other people's interests are elsewhere. But yet, can you say more about what got you into it? Or is this how you approach a lot of things in your life?

Jessica Ocean (01:44)

I think it's more, this is how I approach a lot of things in my life. I think that, you know, there's, I probably spent like a lot of my earlier life being like, I'd like to learn something. Let me like read some books on it. And I think I've more now shifted to like almost anything that feels useful to do. I'm going to learn more by like sort of just standing next to people who are really good at it already and just watching.

and so that, mean, like, you know, in like the work that I do and art I've done before and stuff like that, that was kind of my strategy was like, you know, I used to be a body painter and I basically learned how to do that by like standing next to the people who are currently the world champions and just like watching them for hours. yeah. And, and so, it's. Yeah.

Divia (02:13)

Mm

Well.

And was that easy to stand to get into this and just stand next to the world champion?

Jessica Ocean (02:42)

Well, I mean, in this, it actually does depend on the, on the industry. In this case, it was like, it was at a festival and the festival was open to the public and you could just, the whole point was you could go walk around and watch as they were doing their work. and I didn't, yeah. And I didn't quite realize at the time, this is when I was like, the first time I went to one of these festivals, I was like 17. And I didn't quite realize at the time how like good a structure that was, you know, and now I'm in like, in the rest of my work, I'm doing stuff like.

Divia (03:08)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (03:12)

You know, I'd like to negotiate this contract. Well, I can't really stand next to somebody who's negotiating a contract because they won't let me in the room, you know? and so just like that being one of the first things where I was like really trying to learn by kind of like osmosis, but like a bit more nuanced osmosis. yeah, it was just like a good structure for that. and then I guess, yeah, with like parenting and stuff, I'm like, well, I'd like to be a parent and now we're becoming parents.

Divia (03:18)

Right.

Jessica Ocean (03:42)

and I don't, and I done things like I'd watched like birth videos and stuff like that. And that had felt like I was picking up a huge amount non -verbally. And so I was like, well, I like to, this seems obvious to continue with, with like parenting kind of more generally or like parenting different ages and stuff. So yeah.

Divia (03:49)

Thank

Right.

It makes sense. there's so much more video out there than even when I was having my first kid, I think, you which was she's almost 12. And there was a lot on YouTube then, but I think there's much more of a culture of it now. That seems right.

Jessica Ocean (04:07)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I guess so. mean, I don't I wasn't really looking for parenting stuff, but I think there's just like more content on everything. I will say that there's a lot of.

Divia (04:24)

think so, yeah.

Jessica Ocean (04:30)

The thing that I found is kind of annoying, at least if I'm like looking on YouTube, is often what I want is I just want like a fly on the wall. Like I would love someone to just like record themselves interacting with their family for like hours and on an end and I'll just watch this. But often it's like, hi there, welcome to my channel. I'm going to talk about the plot. And you're like, I don't, you're now describing what you're doing and that's not actually what I want. Like I don't want your description as much as I want to observe. I mean, some obviously the descriptions are sometimes good, but.

Divia (04:44)

Right.

Thank you.

Jessica Ocean (05:00)

Sometimes it's like the entire video will just be the description and then you sort of don't get the benefits of like watching all of the subtle nonverbal stuff or whatever.

Divia (05:04)

Right.

Yeah, that's interesting. Though, I mean, I would say like fly on the wall. I'm like, but doesn't, certainly as a parent, my perspective is that my parenting wouldn't be the same if someone were watching it. Whereas maybe for something like body painting, just, that's sort of the way people always do it.

Jessica Ocean (05:13)

Yeah.

No, no, no, no. mean, yeah.

Yeah, no, maybe it fly on the walls are not necessarily a good description, but it's like, you know, say if you, if you go visit people, your visiting is going to impact them. But like, it's

you know, it's still within a range or something. Like you're not going to get like something that they're not going to like decide that all they're doing is tap dancing or something, you know, like in that period of time, like you'll still get, I don't know. Like I kind of also have a theory that like there's only so long people can like put on various like fronts or something. Like you end up like if you're, if you're, Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (05:46)

Sure.

Yeah, yeah, for sure.

Yeah, like if you go camping with people or whatever, you can really see sort of how I think of it.

Jessica Ocean (06:10)

Or like even like I've been interviewing people recently for work and it's like, it doesn't actually take that long for what it feels like, like whatever front they were putting up to sort of just like relax a bit. Like as if they're like, I'm tired of this or I don't want it to. Yeah. So, and yeah, it would be, it would be different, but it's still, it's also still more information than I have had given, you know, the environment that I've been in the last couple of years, last decade, which hasn't had a lot of.

hasn't been around a lot of raising kids.

Divia (06:42)

Yeah, so can you tell me what are some of the main things you think you have learned from doing this?

Jessica Ocean (06:48)

Yeah, so.

One of the things that I think I've been paying a lot of attention to when I'm like hanging out with friends who have kids is it's something about like the baseline amount of energy it takes to like maintain themselves as a parent and their whole system. And like, I guess I grew up around or like a lot of the families I've been exposed to a very like high energy. It's like

It takes a lot of investment to be the people that they are in that moment. You know, I also, one of my, so I was body painter, but I was also a face painter. So I spent a lot of time at like kids birthday parties and like seeing like parents from that perspective as the sort of person painting their kids faces. And just like, you know, I saw a lot of like, wow, there was so much energy going into maintaining this particular thing or like.

Divia (07:21)

Mm

Interesting.

Jessica Ocean (07:48)

or into making this particular behavior happen or not happen. And so like one of the things that has been, that I've been like noticing a bunch or paying more attention to is like people who can be very, who can be sort of like still very much in control, in control is not the right word, but like maintaining a situation, like maintaining the family, everybody's like happy, healthy, alive, like upright, and it's relaxed or it's like, it doesn't require that high level of energy.

so that's like something where I've like, I've sort of kept an eye out for people who are doing that and then like, okay, what are you doing? And some of it is like the tone of voice. they're not using like this like child friendly voice that has an intention that's trying to get the kid to do a thing. Like, which I was very, you know, I found that really exhausting when I was a kid's entertainer, cause I was like, I can only maintain this for like half an hour at a time. And you want me to do an hour at a time of like, get kids to do a thing with an intention. And I'm like, that's exhausting.

Divia (08:18)

Mm

you

Mm

Yeah.

Great.

Jessica Ocean (08:47)

Yeah, so that's like one thing has just been like general strategies for like getting the same kind of thing done, but with like a lower level of energy or like a lower level of like effort. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (08:59)

Yeah, so let me see if I can tell you what I heard you say. So it seemed like one of the main kind of, I don't know, factors, if you're doing some factor analysis of like, what is up with parenting is that people have to sort of maintain some baseline of acceptability and like everyone's doing all right. that

Jessica Ocean (09:16)

It's like, everybody alive? Is everybody happy roughly or something? they all like, you know, whatever the standards are for that, that, that parent is holding of like, what does my family need to be at? You know, and for some people it's very high. It's like, my kids have like this great level of behavior and they're accomplishing all these things and whatever, you know, and then for some it's, it's not. Yeah.

Divia (09:21)

It's like within the normal tolerances.

Right.

Mm

Right, and so then, and then trying to model like what goes into that and how much energy does it take like on a day to day basis when people are doing whatever their sustainable thing is. So at the kids birthday party, that's probably not the sustainable thing. That's probably some other thing that's happening. Though I'm sure it depends on the person.

Jessica Ocean (09:44)

Mm

Yeah

Yeah, I think also like I had been really sensitive again from the kids birthday stuff to like parents who felt like they had sort of like overextended themselves or given too much or they were doing something that was like constantly burning them out or something like that. And so a lot of what I've been learning has been general, like watching people who seem like they they're

not hitting that limit and like what's going on there and what are they doing and particularly like what kind of boundaries are they holding like in relation to their kids like because it certainly seemed like there are some people where and again this is sort of like from the perspective of someone who is not in in the arena so like you know I I will sort of like quadruple how much I weight my own opinion once I have an actual like you know once I actually

Divia (10:28)

Mm

Mm

Yeah.

Well, maybe you can come back out in a year or a few years and we can talk about it again then.

Jessica Ocean (10:55)

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Like here's some pretty, well, I mean, actually, I think that is actually a whole, a whole thing that is part of, part of the meta of like observing parents and like making drawing conclusions and things like that is like, how much should I be waiting my own opinion here? Like, you know, there's an, there's extreme examples where there are people who say it's always like this and like, you know, and you'll never like, you know, you'll never get

this thing that you want, you'll always have to give up this thing. And I look at that person, I'm like, well, in the rest of your life, don't seem to, you and I don't seem to be very similar. So I don't know how much I can sort of analogize from you to me, but then there are people who are more similar to me and, or like who, you know, I'm like, well, you have a lot of really good skills in these other areas. Maybe like how much should I be waiting or how much should I be analogizing or generalizing from them to what I should expect or something?

Divia (11:31)

Right.

Jessica Ocean (11:51)

So that's like a whole meta.

Divia (11:53)

Yeah, there's a meta issue of like how much can you assume that what's how it's gonna be for you is what it's gonna be like for other people and

Jessica Ocean (11:58)

Yeah. And the thing that's been most helpful, so like the thing that is like often difficult is when I have like someone who I'm watching something happen and say it's like that they're getting really burnt out or something. And, and it's very easy for, for that to seem like really, really likely for me because it's such a big part of their experience. But then like, one of the things that's been really good is

This isn't just about kind of like birth and newborn stuff, but is talking to my midwife because she has so many examples. She's been to a thousand births or whatever. And so she, she's seen that person who's been in that situation, but she's also seen like, so she just sort of has a bigger, a bigger sample size. And so I kind of, if I, if I ask her for, you know, well, how likely is this thing or like, how often does this come up or like, what do people do when this happens? It just feels much more.

Like I have more general trust about like the frequency. Yeah, well, because I think that like there's also a tricky thing with, know, if someone's having, say if I have a friend who's a parent and they're going through a really hard time and there's like, I want to learn from that, but I also want to support them as a person. part of supporting, there's also a thing where it's...

Divia (12:59)

that she's really seen a lot of people.

Jessica Ocean (13:22)

Again, like, I'm sure I will know, I will have a different perspective of this once I have kids, but like the idea that the situation they're in might have been avoidable is like often not something that is possible to sort of say, or particularly from my perspective as like not a parent. But if someone's like, I'm in this terrible situation where I don't know, myself and my partner are fighting all the time about this particular thing. And from their perspective, it's unavoidable.

Divia (13:40)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (13:50)

And it sort of has to be unavoidable in their mind. Cause otherwise the alternative is that it was, that it was avoidable and that's even more terrible. It's sort of. Yeah.

Divia (13:58)

Yeah, no, I think that makes sense because the way people are talking to their friends isn't usually formatted for like being epistemically clean in the way that you can really like aggregate this stuff and figure out what causes what and how likely things are, whereas the midwife isn't... I assume it's less loaded for her to be talking about these sorts of things.

Jessica Ocean (14:05)

Yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And, and so that is like, in terms of like learning from other people's experience, that thing where like, it's, it's taboo for me to be, to, hold the belief, maybe that was avoidable, particularly as someone who doesn't yet have kids. Like, you know, is that, that sort of like, it can make it a little bit harder to, to do this, like learning from experience. And it's less hard when it's like, you're just watching a video or something. Cause

Those people don't care about my opinion about them. yeah. Yes, yeah.

Divia (14:45)

Mm -hmm. Right. OK, so I'm going to keep asking. So what are some things that you've seen in terms of how people can, how parents can operate at a lower baseline energy expenditure and not getting burned out? What's your current working model of this?

Jessica Ocean (14:57)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah. Okay. So there's a couple of things around. So I was okay. So there's one thing that's like the structure, how they structure their environment, or how their environment is structured, and how much like, how much they're sort of seeing that as a leverage point for their own energy, or their own, like, you know, how difficult it is. There's a thing I want to call just like how much they they they

What's the word? Like anti -martyrdom or like something about boundaries. It's like, there are some people who sort of are like, well, to be a good person, I have to like go beyond my whatever. Or like to be a good parent or like the trade -off is this is the obvious trade -off to make as opposed to other people who would say like, well, in order to raise my kids well, I need to be healthy and well rested and have energy for them. So that's like.

Divia (15:47)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (16:02)

Like there's sort of a particular paradigm around like, should you be expecting that you're going to push yourself further than you need to? And like that then, yeah.

Divia (16:05)

Mm

Okay, wait, so I'm interested in that, but I also want to ask about the environment thing. Like, what do you think the biggest differences are in, like, how can you tell which one a person is doing about their environment or like, what are the people that are doing the most relaxed thing? Yeah, like if people are seeing it as a high leverage thing to make their environment a particular way to make their life easier, like, how can you tell that's happening? How does it work?

Jessica Ocean (16:24)

How can I tell which one?

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, so one way to tell that it's not happening is there's like, there's, there's some kind of problem that's like consistently there that is constantly being solved by like, a parent will just try harder. So it's like, like this thing is, you know, I'm thinking of examples about like kids like

wanting to eat certain foods or not wanting to eat certain foods and then that's sort of being sold by their parent like trying to persuade them or putting a lot of effort into like figuring something out like this that's probably not a good example because i don't think i have a lot of good examples of seeing people with with food i have like so i have some friends who like when i you know because i think that they're like pretty good at this who like you when you go into their home you can sort of see kind of trade -offs that they've made

Like the way that they've organized, the food situation is extremely like, everything's healthy and extremely convenient. Like they've decided, you you can tell like they've decided to spend a bit more money on stuff that is convenient, but there's also healthy, but that is like, how long does it take to feed a two year old? Okay. Literally two seconds. Cause I've just pulled it off the, you know, like I pulled this thing off the pantry. and, like, I'm trying to think of like counter examples to that.

Divia (17:41)

Mm

Mm

I mean, certainly I see stuff on, I don't know, I watch like home decorating shows on TV or something. And sometimes I'm like, cool, they have this whole open shelving on the bottom and they have toddlers, like what's going on? And I often wonder because I'm like, well, I think some people's kids just leave that stuff alone. And so like maybe that's what's happening, but it would never work for me. I don't know that's the sort of thing you mean.

Jessica Ocean (18:07)

Yeah

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

like as in you have shelves that kids can just go and get stuff from or whatever.

Divia (18:35)

sorry. I mean, if it's stuff that the parent wants the kid to have, that seems great. My experience with open shelving in toddlers is even if it's not like dangerous or fragile, then it's all over the floor all the time. Which again, but I don't know if that's the sort of thing you mean by like environmental.

Jessica Ocean (18:38)

Yeah. Yeah. yeah.

Yes. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, so there's definitely a thing that I feel like I've seen it, but I don't have strong examples of it, which is like, we're trying to maintain, say, a house or a household, and it's sort of at adult standards in a particular way. And the kid is breaking the rules. The kid is violating the agreements of the house, and then I, as the parent, have to sort of like...

Divia (19:13)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (19:18)

step in and manage the fact that they're, violating the agreements. And, and like the opposite thing would be like, okay, well, I don't know. I'm thinking of like the, again, I kind of wait stuff that's like, see on video less strongly than if I've seen it in someone's like real life, just cause you know, like it makes shit up. But, I'm thinking of two particular like YouTubers, both of whom are like Christian homemaker homeschooling moms. Yeah. yeah.

Divia (19:31)

Mm -hmm. Sure.

I watched a video from one of the ones you linked. I don't know, but, anyway.

Jessica Ocean (19:46)

Which yeah, we can talk, we can talk about that. yeah. but there was one in particular where, or maybe two in particular where they basically were just talking about how aggressively they like, called their kids toys. And like, it was like quite strong and, and it was very obvious that they're like, yeah, my, like, there is a, bit of a power dynamic here or like a struggle where like, I'm sure my kids would prefer to have lots of toys, but also they don't, like, they may, I prefer to, to not have to like.

Divia (19:58)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (20:16)

you know, have all the consequences and then that feeds into whether or not they are feeling good. I'm whatever, you know, they're sort of like looking at it from a whole family system thing. And they're just concluding like, no, I'll give the kid a limitation. know, they can work within the limitation of like how many toys there are. and, and sort of like checking like, well, is, is it getting overwhelmed? Okay. Well, in that case, I have to like push on this button harder or, whatever. and I think that it, it.

Divia (20:26)

Mm

Mm

Jessica Ocean (20:46)

Maybe one way to describe like the difference, although this is sort of like a result maybe rather than a, an input is they seem to understand themselves as having quite a lot of agency over their space. And like, some ways being a bit like the architects. And this is like mostly moms, but like, that's just cause like the moms are the ones making the videos and stuff. Like I, you know, I think generally the adult population. Yeah, exactly. And you know, well, and,

Divia (21:00)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Sure. I've met dads who think about this stuff a lot too. I think it's less common, but yeah, happens for sure.

Jessica Ocean (21:14)

Malcolm, my husband thinks about this a lot himself in the context of his own mind. So he's like, you know, like for example, building himself little scripts that change how he uses Twitter and stuff so that he's not getting hooked in a particular way or whatever. And.

Divia (21:21)

Mm

Mm

Jessica Ocean (21:33)

I think there's an, yeah, maybe another like anti -signal that someone's doing this is if they, if they talk a lot about needing to use something like willpower or needing to use something like they're, they're describing the way they solve this problem as being like a character issue, you know, rather than like a pragmatic, like it's sort of like, it's not allowed to be easy or something. Like they, can't pick the, the easy, the easy one. yeah.

Divia (21:48)

Mm.

Got it.

Okay, so that seems like one thing that's pretty important in your view, at least based on what you've seen so far, for keeping things, like a sustainable level of energy investment is sort of thinking about things on a system level and not making plans that include, my character will improve or I will just use willpower constantly or things like that.

Jessica Ocean (22:06)

Mm

Yeah, yeah, stuff like, stuff like that. Or even just being attentive to what is, how is the environment supporting or messing with our ability to live as a family. And I'm thinking like, I was kind of just now talking about things that are mostly like within your home, but I do also think that like, your immediate, you know, like, neighborhood or whatever is also the kind of like relevant.

you know, relevant thing here thinking about like, well, do I have, you know, are people like conceptualizing of themselves, conceptualizing their neighborhoods as being part of the system or interacting with the system that they're, you know, part of or something. And yeah, definitely like the default, I feel like there's like a default thing that I see that's like a, maybe it's a kind of slightly rat -racy high -income city.

Divia (23:07)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (23:17)

parent thing, which is like, and then the solution is I will just push harder and we'll be like more rushed or we'll be, you know, like, I'll get everything done. It's kind of like a little bit of like a Mata superhero sort of vibe. Like, and, and I'm like, okay, cool. Maybe that's the life you like, but you know, no, I mean, like, I like a certain amount of energy and like vitality, but, but that seems like it really relies on the parents having their shit together. And I'm like, I'm.

Divia (23:30)

Mm -hmm.

Right. Doesn't it feel to you?

Jessica Ocean (23:47)

I don't want to rely on that, like I want to be able to like not have my shit together 100 % of the time, you know? So.

Divia (23:50)

Yeah.

Yeah, okay, so I think I understand that somewhat. So I didn't want to drop the other thing you were saying about the, it seemed like some people's of framework for thinking about parenting is that it's like a necessary ingredient for them to be sort of overextending themselves.

Jessica Ocean (23:57)

Yeah

Ahem.

Yeah, or something like, and I don't actually think this is just parenting. Like, I mean, as I said, I've been interviewing people for like jobs recently and like people definitely have that for like the jobs as well. They're like, there are some people, it just seems who are like, yeah, and then the solution is I will work harder. And I'm like, okay, cool. I mean, if that works for you, I suck at that. So I'm not planning on building a strategy in which my life requires that to be the, know, where that's a load bearing thing.

Divia (24:15)

Mm

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (24:37)

that. Yeah.

Divia (24:37)

Mm

Yeah, and so what, can you say somewhat more about like some choices that you see people making who, when their plan is not to work harder. There's the environmentalism sort of, environment. I think that's Matt Bateman. Matt Bateman, think said about parenting or pedagogy or something, that if the word environmentalism weren't taken, he would use it as his philosophy, which is what I kept thinking.

Jessica Ocean (24:53)

Hmm, mm -hmm, yeah.

Yeah.

You would use that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But like stuff that people do that is not so much about their environment, but that is about that. Yeah. I mean, okay, this is, I'm going to describe, try and describe it in the most concrete way possible, but it's still pretty like, subtle or woo or something is, is like, I feel like if you watch a parent child interaction, like say if you're like sitting in a playground and you're just like watching parents with their kids, like,

Divia (25:11)

Yeah.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (25:35)

If you can sort of start, or I can at least like start tracking, like what are, what are the parents trying to do? Like what is their intention right now and how strongly are they holding to that intention? And like, are they, how well are they adapting to like resistances to getting that attention, intention like met by their kid? And like the people, seems that like, seems are doing the thing that I would like to do or more.

Divia (25:41)

Mm

Mm -hmm.

Jessica Ocean (26:06)

relaxed or something. It's like they may have an intention, but how do I describe it? It's like their intentions are very pragmatic as opposed to something like social or like what people will think. it's like they're not trying to control their kids behavior in order to make sure that the other people around aren't judging them in a particular way or they're not trying to like control their kids behavior.

in like, because they have an idea of like, what a good kid will behave like, and they're like, trying to match the kids behavior to that. They're like, it's, it's, seems like there's more like, and, then as a result, there's like something like more negotiation happening as opposed to more like control error, try and keep controlling error, like, and yeah.

Divia (26:40)

Mm

Yeah, it seems like you're saying if they're more grounded in something about what outcomes they're looking for, maybe what their values are, then the tactics are more flexible? Does that seem...?

Jessica Ocean (27:10)

Yeah, and yeah, yeah, yeah. So it's like, say if, if like, what you care about is like, I don't know that your kid's not going to be like super overtired in the next couple of hours and, and you're going to have to deal with the consequences of that. And they're like in the, in the moment and they're playing on the playground and they don't want to leave or whatever. There's like, there's like one mode, which I want to just call like, it's like the, doesn't deviate very much. Like they're like, I have a plan and I want to execute the plan.

And then they're sort of like using a bunch of maybe various tactics, like conjoining or maybe a little bit of like stronger language or something more, pressurey, whatever. But, but they're, the only strategy is, you know, we need to leave at the time that I want to leave, or we need to leave in the way that I want to leave or some, I don't know. Like it feels like the plan is very narrow. Whereas like, like it feels like the other thing is more like.

Divia (27:41)

Mm

Mm

Mm

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (28:08)

Okay, this kid has their own intention and I've got my intention and I'm bigger than them and I'm smarter than them and I have more context. So I have more degrees of freedom in terms of playing, like figuring out how can we get both of these to happen? And so you see, it feels like there's more like creativity or something and more like, in like the person, person A who's like got this plan to like get the kid to do whatever the thing is they want.

Divia (28:20)

Mm -hmm.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (28:36)

They seem to get really stressed whenever the plan isn't going to get accomplished, regardless if the goal is going to get accomplished or not. Whereas like in the second version, it's like, they're not really worried if the plan doesn't get accomplished. They're more focused on the goal. You know, like I think that's, so it's like, maybe we didn't end up doing, maybe like kid has now, I don't, I don't know. I'm not, I still don't really understand much about like young kids nap times and stuff, but I do understand they're very important. like, like I don't know what time. Well.

Divia (28:43)

Okay.

to some people.

Jessica Ocean (29:04)

I just mean like, like, I have definitely seen a lot of parental attention taken up with the question of how to make naps happen or not happen or whatever. but you know, the second in the second version is like, they may find that actually the kid is falling asleep now in like, in a stroller or something. And like, that wasn't what they planned, but it's still going to work out for the bigger picture or something like that. And,

Divia (29:15)

share.

Mm -hmm.

Jessica Ocean (29:34)

Like it feels like that's a kind of general, a general pattern where like.

Again, it's like, it's like much less, less, or a stupid way I could put it is like they're attached to the things that matter and they're not attached to the things that don't. And they've gotten very clear on what matters and what doesn't or something.

Divia (29:58)

Yeah, and in terms of if we could try to pick apart like what it means because probably the people in the moment really know would answer some question like no, no, of course it matters. That's why. But it seems like maybe you think that wouldn't be stable under self -reflection or they're like more epicycles about like that. It's really about some other thing and they can't tell.

Jessica Ocean (30:06)

mm -hmm. mm -hmm. yeah.

Well, I mean.

I think that there is some, okay, so there are some people where like I watched them, you know, and this isn't just in parenting, mean like lots of kinds of social interactions, but like parenting is just like the one that's salient right now, particularly for like young kids. Where like, I'm watching somebody who really holds a value that I don't. And so they are expending a lot of energy to protect this particular value. And I'm looking at going, well, I probably would just drop.

that because I don't care about it that much. like, yeah, yeah. Well, and it's like, I, it's not like I wouldn't care what other people in the playground think because like, if you don't get invited back or like, or if someone complains and you're no longer allowed there or, you know, whatever, but, the, you know, I can think of people who, for example, have like, make sure other people like you as like foundational life.

Divia (30:49)

Whereas an example would be like what other people at the playground think.

Jessica Ocean (31:12)

Like value like they've that make sure other people like you is like definitely quarter who they like experience themselves as and I'm just like no like that's not So so it's like they may be pursuing a strategy where they need to do have their kid act in a way that will make other people like them like the parent and I'm like, okay Well, what would I not need to do here if I didn't need to protect that value, you know Maybe actually the kid can be like wearing clothes that nobody like that are ridiculous, you know

Divia (31:13)

Mm

Mm

Right.

Jessica Ocean (31:40)

That seems fine. And you know, where, in this situation, they're like, well, in order to have everybody like me, my kid has to be wearing appropriate clothes, which means that even though the kid doesn't care about the clothes or the kid wants to wear something else, you know, I have to get the clothes to be the way that I want them, you know.

Divia (31:40)

Mm

Yeah, that makes sense. And this definitely seems to be a thing that, there's some, obviously, variation, but it seems like the older people get and the more kids people have, the less they tend to care about that type of stuff. I don't know if you've also observed that.

Jessica Ocean (32:09)

Mm

Yeah, I mean, I so I mean, I'm in a pretty kid. I mean, a little bit of a kid does it. It's not entirely true. There are actually quite a lot of kids around, particularly younger kids. But the public spheres are definitely not like often people with kids are maybe a little bit more in kid only spaces or something.

Divia (32:35)

I mean, Sam, you're in the Bay, right?

Jessica Ocean (32:37)

Yeah, I'm in the bay. mean, but I'm also in like, I live near Noe Valley, which is like really a hotspot for like young families and stuff. And so it's not like there's no like there's there's plenty of people with with kids around less less so like six, seven and older. Like there's a lot of like toddlers and things like that. But yeah. Yeah.

Divia (32:57)

Mm

Yeah, I was at a birth class before I had my first when we were in San Francisco. And I think, I don't know if I have the numbers right, but I think before around when our kids were all turning one, half the people had left. It's definitely, mean.

Jessica Ocean (33:11)

Wow. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I think there's a lot of, yeah. mean, a lot of people are constantly like, should I leave the bay? And, you know, and, and that it definitely also has, yeah, this reputation of being very kid unfriendly. yeah.

Divia (33:29)

I I lived there with kids for years. don't know. I think there lots of things I liked about it and some things I didn't. And I grew up in a city.

Jessica Ocean (33:36)

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, I'm yeah. I guess I was just trying to say that like, that like, don't, you know, you know, you're probably the person I know, who has the most kids, like leaving aside like grandparents that I know of who whose kids are all grown and stuff like that. And, and I do know. Yeah, like I know quite a few people with like one or two or something like that, but

Divia (33:38)

Anyway, sorry, I don't mean to interrupt you. saying, I was saying that I think as people get older and they have more kids and you were like, well.

Sure.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (34:06)

but yeah, definitely the like weird YouTube niche of like kind of slightly crunchy Christian homeschooling moms has been like, like a surprising, like, not peer, but like, just like, again, this kind of mentor, like, I feel like I could look up to you because again, they, they're just things that they don't worry about that people who, yeah. Yeah.

Divia (34:13)

Okay.

Yeah, so can you tell - I watched at least one of those videos. I could try to figure out I should have written down what it was and had it on hand, but... Probably, it was her - she was talking to one of the other moms. You linked it on Twitter and it was her talking to one of the other ones, I think.

Jessica Ocean (34:34)

Was it Lisa from Farmhouse on Boone or was it a different one?

yeah. So this is probably like Lisa who has like eight kids talking to Abby, I think her name is who has like 12 or something.

Divia (34:48)

Maybe, and she had a baby with her, think. Yeah, anyway.

Jessica Ocean (34:50)

Probably, yeah, Yeah, you had a question about.

Divia (34:55)

Well, just so I at least have some headaches, but probably some people listening have never watched one of those videos. Can you say a little bit about who they are? And I don't know.

Jessica Ocean (35:01)

Yeah, yeah. So that, I mean, they're all like, mostly, almost exclusively mothers. Occasionally there's like a father who's like involved in the channel, but generally not the primary one. The common patterns are they tend to have a lot of kids, like, you know, five, five plus or, but like some of them is like, again, this one woman, Abby has like 12 or something. They tend to be Christian.

and tend to be doing stuff like homeschooling and they're sort of like influences, like they do stuff on homemaking or whatever. And they're selling a sort of like a particular kind of lifestyle or like a particular kind of attitude towards like raising a family and stuff. I would say they maybe are considering it more of like a vocation or some of them it's strange because like they, sort of.

Some of them paint themselves as something like a stay at home mom, but what they're actually doing is running a business about the image of being a stay at home mom. so that's actually quite interesting because like almost all of them are actually like at least like social media entrepreneurs, if not like entrepreneurs in other fields as well, you know. And, you know, you get some that are like quite strict in the sense of like, you know, they have gender norms that they're following and they're like,

Divia (36:02)

Right?

Mm

Jessica Ocean (36:23)

you know, their adherence to the Bible is so strict, but then some of them aren't and they would sort of be, if you squint a little, can see them, you can see the way that they would relate to like hippie moms in California or something. Like they're all also into home birth and natural remedies and stuff like that. and, yeah, I guess there've been a couple that I've found and, and this one woman called Lisa from Farmhouse and Boone, she's like,

Divia (36:35)

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (36:50)

She mostly does lifestyle stuff. There's a lot about sourdough, which I'm not really that into. But she is essentially just doing a like, I put my life out on the internet and you can see what it's like theoretically. Obviously it's like short and specific. But the thing that I think that one of the things that I found the most, coolest is like, okay, if you were to just gather

Divia (36:55)

Yeah.

Sure.

Jessica Ocean (37:20)

a bunch of women in their thirties who live in the Bay area, some of whom have kids and some of whom don't. And you're like, what is parenting like? Or like how, like, like what is this thing? They'd be like, it's like a huge deal. And like, everything's really stressful and it's really hard. And you've got like, and like the, the, the fear, I think that that is kind of in like the assumptions around what it is and the trade -offs you have to make are like just very, it's just very, it feels quite present. Right. And in this like,

Divia (37:41)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (37:50)

like with this woman or with like the podcast where she's interviewing other women and they, you know, they all kind of talk to each other. It's one, kind of social media soup. There's, there's a sense of like, no big deal -ness that I really appreciate. It feels very like, like I could adopt part of this attitude. You know, it's like, okay, well, like, for example, you know, being pregnant.

Divia (38:04)

Mm -hmm.

Jessica Ocean (38:16)

is no big deal. Like there's obviously parts that are a big deal or there are times where there can be a problem. But like, you know, you're talking about people who've been pregnant like eight times in their life, like they have done it just a lot. And so they've sort of like, they have strategies for mitigating stuff. They have a whole approach, you know, as opposed to people who've only, you know, who haven't done it or they've done it once. And it was a big deal because it was only one time and they maybe didn't know anyone else who was doing it or something. So yeah, that's been like the main

Divia (38:44)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (38:45)

There's been some tactical stuff like learning about strategies that use, I think like the general attitude has been one that is, yeah.

Divia (38:53)

Yeah, and can you say more about like what the no big deal, like what that means to you, at least the part that does feel right for you to internalize?

Jessica Ocean (39:01)

Yeah,

Well, so like one of the things that I think I've heard this particular influencer Lisa say this specifically is something like there are problems and challenges that she's encountered at different, they call it like different seasons in their life. it's very, it's like very, yeah, yeah, yeah. where, like where, you know, she didn't know how she was going to solve a problem. She was in under her, like in over her head, like underwater.

Divia (39:21)

Christians like to talk about seasons for sure.

Jessica Ocean (39:34)

And then she figured it out or she and her husband figured it out or she and her family figured it out. And then she's done that enough times to know, to have a general kind of faith that that can happen and that will happen. Like, and, so then there's a, there's a, and, and I'm also gonna like, analogize this to like running projects and stuff. Like, I, know, I used to run circus projects. Now I'm like running this big mental health project. and you know, when there's someone who's like a new project manager or a leader or something.

Divia (39:37)

Okay.

Jessica Ocean (40:03)

You know, a problem comes up and then that problem's really big. But then like, if you've run them, those kinds of things enough times, you're like, it's true. I don't know how to solve this problem. Like, yep. And it's true that it will completely tank our project if I don't. And like I've, I've enough times I've gone through this to know, to have a sense that like there are lots of possibilities and, and, you know, to have a sense of optimism about it.

Divia (40:26)

Yeah, it's like you could take something as objects that maybe people first doing it can't. They're kind of like, okay, well, like a bunch of my sort of energy or focus or conscious attention needs to be on this thing that like there's this gap in my plan. And other people are like, no, plants have gaps. That's to be expected. Like I'm not looking to have a plan without gaps or something kind of like that.

Jessica Ocean (40:31)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Something like, yeah, like I, I'm not looking to have a plan without gaps or like, you know, I think a related one that feels connected to parenting is like, this feels unsustainable and I'm overwhelmed. And like, I think that there's like a, attitude I've seen some people take, which is like, that means that that's what this kind of thing is like.

That's what parenting is like is for it to be unsustainable and for me to be overwhelmed. Whereas like what I guess I felt like I've taken from her and the other, that general social media sphere is like, sometimes you get this feeling that you're under, you're underwater and you're overwhelmed. And then that is a signal to do something that you then like a way to respond. And then you have a new capability that you didn't have before, or your whole family has a new capability or something.

Divia (41:27)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (41:34)

And like, I get the impression that, for example, these women who've had like many, many, many babies, the amount of energy it takes to like look after a baby is just like 10 times less than like a first time mother or something like that. Like some ridiculous amount less. And it's in part because they've learned a bunch of things that will actually like reduce the need for investment in it. And it's like, I know I'm not going to get to that like on my first baby. Like that's.

Divia (41:56)

Great.

Okay.

Jessica Ocean (42:03)

you there's a bunch of pragmatic skills you have to learn or whatever, but I'm like, hopefully I can get something from that, you know, and not, yeah.

Divia (42:10)

do also wonder though how much of it is like selection effects basically, like that the people who keep having babies are the people for whom, cause I don't like, I just, wonder. So there's a mom, if you're listening and you, she probably will listen to this, but this is when I, I think when I only had two kids and I knew I, we wanted to have about five kids and she definitely did have five kids. Now she has six and she also like, she did a lot of homeschooling stuff that seemed.

Jessica Ocean (42:14)

yeah. For whom it's easy, yeah.

Divia (42:38)

Like when I imagined doing it, seemed hard to me and she also did other, anyway, she was doing a lot and I remember, cause I, at the time, I was sort of did a lot of asking people like, like how do people with bigger families do this? And people are like, maybe you should go like talk to her or like look what she's doing. And I remember then she posted something on, on some group we were both in where she was like, my toddler, like he,

He doesn't, or maybe he was a baby, but like an older baby, like doesn't stay asleep at night unless I stay in the bed with him. Like what do I do? And it was her, I don't know, it was like her fifth kid or something. And I was like, I see. Okay, so that's because I've had, and it could have been something, like I'm always, like part of what I'm always trying to figure out is like, okay, is it that they have some secret thing that they're doing on purpose? Is it that they have some secret thing that they're doing unconsciously? Or are they just different?

Jessica Ocean (43:12)

Yeah.

Hmm.

Divia (43:30)

when people are getting different outcomes from me. And that one I updated towards like, okay, I think her kids are different because she wasn't like, it didn't seem like she sort of had a, she wasn't like, well, of course I already tried these 10 things and whatever. She was kind of like, this is a surprise. Like, what do do? Which I mean, it makes sense that under that circumstance she would ask. Or at one point I was visiting a friend of mine who, she has 10 kids now and she had seven or eight at the time. And she had, the way her pantry was set up, this is like what I was talking about before. I was like,

Jessica Ocean (43:30)

Hmm.

This has never happened before. Yeah.

Wow, yeah.

Divia (44:00)

But don't your kids just take everything out of the pantry? she was clearly being honest. And her other kids, were there. were like, yeah, one of them did that. That was the whole thing, that he did that. And I was sort of like, okay, one of them. Interesting. Yeah, no, and so, anyway, I do wonder. And of course, some people keep having, people's decisions about whether to have more children are, I think, ultimately very complex and multifaceted and all of that.

Jessica Ocean (44:08)

Mm -hmm. You're like, that would have happened every day. Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. I will say that like, it seems like people like have like, like people having more kids seems like evidence that they want more kids. Like, like, like as, and so the people who - Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, I am kind of, I don't, I can't really think of people where I, I really think that they're in a culture where they don't feel like they have control over that in any way. like, yeah.

Divia (44:39)

For sure, yeah. At least assuming they have access to birth control.

No, I mean, it's definitely a thing globally. don't personally think anything I know of many people like that.

Jessica Ocean (44:58)

Yeah. But, but I mean, so like, if I see someone who has like, you know, I don't know, I make an assumption or some assumption, given the number of kids I know you have that like you like, that is something that you're glad to do and that you want that. And if you wanted fewer, you would have had fewer or something. Yeah. And so, yeah, anyways, just saying that that, whether it's like a sort of inherent or like skill kind of thing, like it's still like the consequence is that that's something that they

Divia (45:10)

Yeah.

For sure, yes.

Jessica Ocean (45:28)

in aggregate, given all the whole of their constraints and their situation and stuff. But yeah, you were saying something about the family with Tan and yeah.

Divia (45:29)

Mm -hmm. Sorry.

I know, it's, well, just, like, this is, this has always been an open question for me, is how much of it, because I do, and, you know, I've tweeted this before, like, from my perspective, you know, like, if the world were made up of people like me, it seems like there is an underinvestment collectively in, like, parenting skills.

Jessica Ocean (45:46)

you

Divia (45:58)

I don't know, building, transfer, acquisition, something. And again, I know people aren't like me, so I'm like, there's something that I'm not modeling about this, why other people don't see it the same way. But to me, this seems like a thing that's important. And a big question that I always have is to what extent are people's tactics and frameworks and things that make it easier, things that really can be transferred?

Jessica Ocean (46:04)

Mm

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (46:27)

And I think some of it definitely can. And I like the parts that you're saying. It seems like you're highlighting things to me. And then when I think like, okay, work to take care of a baby. So I've had five babies and ultimately in the scheme of things, I think my babies have been pretty similar to each other. Like a lot of people describe their babies as being very different. I wouldn't. In some ways they were very different. But on my end, like what I did to take care of them felt pretty similar. And...

Jessica Ocean (46:31)

You

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (46:56)

And yeah, and I definitely think my update over time is like, okay, I think there are some ways that things are easy for me and there's some ways that things are hard for me. And there was a whole different thing going on when I had my first, that I was like learning it. then, and I think if I go back to me with, you know, with one baby, there's so much I could say to me about how to do it that would make my life easier. But I think I've also made a big update that a lot of the people...

Jessica Ocean (47:09)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Divia (47:24)

who have an easier time with it just to really deal with it. There's not actually a lot of transfer that could happen. yeah.

Jessica Ocean (47:28)

Hmm. So one of the things that I have as like an open question, like I don't, I have, I have hopes for what I think, I hope the answer is, but I don't really actually, I don't have a lot of confidence in my conclusions is how much of your baby's temperament is about you. And like I said,

Divia (47:50)

Yeah, and the people who, I think the people who really know more about this than most people are people who've either had like identical twins or people who have adopted kids too. And so I try to pay extra close attention and I think, I think a lot of it is, but I think a lot of it's not. think a lot of it's, or sorry, it is in that it's most people have their genetic kids.

Jessica Ocean (47:58)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah. Well, so I will say that like I, you know, having now like worked a lot on stuff around mental health and like, I'm now like getting a lot of stuff, getting a lot of visibility up close into like how the foster system is run and stuff like that. Like it would be an entirely different like project for me to feel like I could take on like raising a kid that for example, I knew had come from like an abusive home or something like, or.

Divia (48:34)

Right, for sure.

Jessica Ocean (48:35)

or any sort of like, you know, I'm, yeah, yeah.

Divia (48:37)

sorry, here's another, I think maybe a cleaner experiment is like people, like I know I have a friend who, you know, like that's a donor egg or something. Like if they had the child since infancy, but the genetics are not theirs. Like I think that's the more clean experiment.

Jessica Ocean (48:44)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think in general, it's like, it's like, first of all, like this kid is made up of my genes, which I know me, but then I also know my whole family. my, you know, like it, you know, it's not just necessarily me and then also my partner and his whole family. And, and so like, I think there is a likeness thing where, I mean, I'm, guess I'm hopeful, which is something like, I will like something about interacting with

Divia (48:58)

for sure.

Jessica Ocean (49:17)

these kids more than other kids, independent of loving them, which I'm assuming that part, you know, like I already love her and I haven't met her yet. So, but, but I do think there's something where it's like, yeah, the reason I'm with my husband, some of the reason I'm with him is because like, we're kind of similar people and we share a lot. And then like, if we have kids, they're going to share both of us. Like, I think there's a, there's a kind of likeness or similarity thing that like, I expect to be.

Divia (49:20)

yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (49:45)

I expect that that would make things more, I don't want to say like within your control, but like within your expectations or something maybe. Then yeah. Yeah. Like, like I guess I'm, I'm saying like, I have a whole different amount of like, or at people who like, you know, raise kids, either that they're not genetically related to, then even further kids who have had like some real big disadvantage.

Divia (49:54)

No, I agree with that. I think it tends to be much easier, given all that.

Jessica Ocean (50:15)

that is gonna make their whatever harder. But I guess I was thinking when I was saying like, how much is your baby about you? I was thinking particularly about like, you're say the mother and you're carrying them like literally in your body and then you're later carrying them on you a lot, your whole somatic makeup and like how, I'd like to hope and this is why I'm sort of like.

Divia (50:37)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (50:43)

I'm not particularly confident about my conclusions yet. I'll be more confident later that like, I have gotten massively more chill over the last decade. Like in terms of like semantically, physiologically things do not bother me and I don't get into fight or flight or whatever that I used to. And I'm like, is that going to be real good? I don't know. Like, hopefully, you know, like I can imagine. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (50:44)

Yeah.

Mm

Mm

What do we see? It's obviously good because like regardless, like I think there are two questions. Like one is what is the effect on the baby? But then even, and I think there is some, but even if there's no effect on the baby, I think it would affect your experience a huge amount, right?

Jessica Ocean (51:11)

Mm -hmm. If the baby is having a bad time. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And so I think that that's also one of the tricky things, particularly when I get stories or like people's experiences about the sort of like pregnancy and newborn stage is like when I'm getting a story from someone I know is like a lot more anxious than me.

You know, I'm like, how much do I generalize? Because the thing you're describing as having made you like lose your mind with anxiety would not have bothered me. Like when that sort of thing has happened. So how much do I generalize about the stuff that I haven't experienced yet? so like there's some part of it that's kind of cocky being like, I don't think that whatever. And then there's some part of it that's like kind of, you know, a weird humble thing being like, well, I don't know. Maybe, you know, yeah.

Divia (51:50)

Mm

sense.

I do think there's a very high correlation between people who are anxious about stuff with their kids and people who are anxious in general. This is absolutely what I've seen.

Jessica Ocean (52:11)

Yeah. Yeah. I mean, like one, like example of this is, you know, the, kind of general trope of like pregnancy making your emotions go wild or whatever. Like, I haven't found that basically at all. specific thing is like one, I'm pretty emotional already, but it's not a big deal. Like I feel the emotions and then they, they're done. I, and they feel about as trustworthy as they were before. Like they don't feel less trustworthy, like.

Divia (52:21)

Mm

You should have found it. Yeah.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (52:41)

Like I haven't had a time, I've maybe had one time when I was like, okay, maybe 10 % of that reaction didn't feel like it was accounted for by the actual, like the whole phenomenon that I was experiencing. But like that's so small. And like I talked to other people, particularly like, you know, say a man whose wife is pregnant and he's dealing with the fact that now she seems to be hugely emotional and like in an untrustworthy way. And

Divia (52:48)

you

you

Jessica Ocean (53:08)

Yeah, so that was an example of something where people were like, this will happen.

Divia (53:13)

It didn't, yeah.

Jessica Ocean (53:14)

And not only like, like maybe it may be a little more emotional, I don't know, but if it did, it didn't make it like in a more untrustworthy way or something. so yeah. yeah, definitely having more like, it's like, okay, I now feel like I can evaluate those pieces of advice given how it shook out in, in pregnancy, at least, you know? So then it's like, well, maybe that gets me a little bit more information about how much to like.

Divia (53:24)

Yeah.

Right.

Jessica Ocean (53:42)

how to integrate that advice when it comes to the stages I haven't experienced yet.

Divia (53:47)

Yeah, it makes sense to me that you're gonna, I don't know. I think some people report feeling really different after they had kids. guess I don't, not me as much as, like I definitely learned a lot. I think I see kids really differently because I just, I don't know, I spent some time with kids before, but I hadn't spent a ton of time, especially with toddlers. Like I'd hung out with some babies and like, also, I claim at least, pretty good memories from when I'm like five up, but like my memories are pretty sparse before that.

Jessica Ocean (53:55)

Yeah. Yeah.

Mm Yeah.

Mm -hmm.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. So you didn't have a

Divia (54:17)

And I didn't know very many kids younger than that, other than, I said, I mean, yeah, a few exceptions, but.

Jessica Ocean (54:20)

Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. We've had, like, I would say there are like three kids under the age of five that we've spent a bunch of time with in last couple of months. And the difference between having no kids we're spending time with and having these three kids, it's felt like quite strong. Like I just feel like I'm understanding more about, I would say like some of the biggest changes in like what I expect to do or like what my, how I expect to approach things have come out of like actually watching how they work.

Divia (54:39)

Okay.

Jessica Ocean (54:52)

You know, yeah, so the main one is actually about, something like rules versus negotiation. and like the way I phrase it is like, you know, there's, there's kind of a standard trope of, know, the parents set the rules for the household. So it's like no hitting in the house or no whatever. And I, and like, you know, I am married to a relationship nerd and we're giant relationship nerds and non coercion nerds and stuff. so.

Divia (54:52)

Yeah, anything you could share?

Mm

Thank

Jessica Ocean (55:21)

I started out with this intention which was like, I would like to operate primarily from like, are the consequences, you know, rather than like rules and like, what are the social consequences and stuff. the thing that has changed my, I still don't know like what I plan to do. And this is stuff that's like for at least like a one year old or one and half. So we got some time.

Divia (55:47)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (55:49)

But one of the biggest things has been noticing, like being, spending time with like a 18 month old and spending time with like a three year old, three and a half year old and like getting a much richer understanding of where their theory of mind limits are at that point. And actually like having points where it's like, no, they don't actually understand that you're a person. Like, like the idea that I am a person is not

Divia (56:08)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (56:19)

It doesn't exist there. so like, can't, it's not fair to like, try and interact or try and like create an environment in which you have to understand that other people are people in order to make sense of the world. Because that's not going to be, it's not going to work yet. And so it made me like much more like, I can kind of see why things like rules like are, can be good, you know.

Divia (56:35)

Huh.

Jessica Ocean (56:48)

because there's like, they're just, they don't understand so much anyways. Like it's not like, you know, like, like so much of the world is confusing to them, you know, and that they're like getting, experiencing for the first time. Like I'm not saying I'm like definitely gonna do one thing or definitely gonna do another thing, but it made me have much more respect for like that as like a whole way of relating to kids that, you know, isn't like, like can still be very loving and can still be whatever.

Divia (57:13)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (57:18)

that I'd sort of thought, well like I'll do it this way. And then I actually looked around and like, wait, this is not gonna work. Like they're not gonna, like it's not gonna be helpful for them. They're not gonna get it. Like trying to understand.

Divia (57:22)

Thank you.

If you go to the 18 month old and you're like, well, if you do that to that person and they don't like it or like what were you imagining?

Jessica Ocean (57:31)

Like, I think like, yeah, like the question of like, yeah, the question of like, like, how would you feel if that were you? Like, it feels like there is that like being able to consider that question is a developmental skill. And like, there's an, there's an era when they can't do it and there's an era when they can. And, you know, operating, trying to operate as if they always can is just going to like, it's fake. you know.

Divia (57:50)

Mm

Yeah, just saying.

Jessica Ocean (58:01)

Yeah, I don't know if that's like, I'm aware I'm like talking to somebody who's probably, yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Divia (58:05)

No, I like it, but I'm happy to share my thoughts about it. don't know. So one of the ways that I think I, I think I've become more, and it's hard to know because it's been like, I've had kids, like I said, my oldest, I'm gonna turn 12 and.

In the past decade, I definitely have changed. How would I have changed without the kids? I don't know. Like, I don't know that person. So I don't know if it's because I had the kids or not. I definitely think I've become much more dance -logical than I used to be.

Jessica Ocean (58:35)

Like there are rules and we got to follow the rules, something like that.

Divia (58:38)

Not exactly mean. I don't know. I'm not sure what you mean by, like, I'm not really sure what rules means here.

Jessica Ocean (58:42)

I mean, I, I, I, yeah, like one, one way I could just think of it is, like, you know, a kid, hits another kid and you stop them from doing that and maybe take away or like put them out of the situation to say, we don't hit here or like no hitting or something like that. You know, I don't, yeah.

Divia (58:46)

Yeah.

Yeah, so definitely, I mean, certainly, absolutely, I try to my kids whenever they go to hit someone, like no question. But for me, that's like less about like, I think if I were like logistically able to do it, that's sort of what I would wanna do for anyone that I saw about to hit anyone is to stop them. So that seems like.

Jessica Ocean (59:05)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. But I mean, like there are many people for whom if I saw them doing something like that, I would like, it's a question of like, where is the, like, like, why is no hitting being set? Yeah.

Divia (59:31)

Yeah, no, and so that's why it seems like, again, I actually consider it like logistically difficult in many cases, but like ultimately I consider it within my rights to try to stop anyone from hitting anyone. Like, you whatever, not really. Like if, I don't know, if a parent is there with her two children and they're right next to her, I'm not gonna like get in between. I'm kind of like, well, you're right there and I don't know. So like there's some nuance to it, but it's sort of like, unless there's someone else who like clearly has it under control. I think that's where my moral authority comes from regarding hitting.

Jessica Ocean (59:41)

Mm Yeah, yeah, Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Well, it's actually less about what the move is and more about the, how do I explain it? It's possible that hitting is not, is not the best example. And there's a different example that would be, that would be better. like, I'm noticing that there's this sort of like, if I imagine two different ways of relating.

Divia (1:00:00)

I don't know if that is at all relevant to what you're saying now.

Jessica Ocean (1:00:24)

to say kids or tripping adults. it doesn't actually, it's actually the fact that they're kids is not the core thing here, which is like in one.

Divia (1:00:32)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:00:37)

Everybody is their own sort of individual, has their own locus of control, and they are navigating a social world in which there are consequences based on how the other people respond to their actions, right? And there's no overall, like, omniscient god that's like, like, you're going to get punished for doing that thing and you're going to get rewarded for doing this thing. It's sort of like, and this is, you know, this is the way that I operate in my

Divia (1:00:42)

Mm

Mm

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:01:07)

like adult romantic relationship. is the way I'd operate with my friends. There's, there's a sense that like I own me and you own you and we're negotiating, right? And there's, and there's a different thing, which is like, I'm in charge of how like something like social interactions go in some very broad sense in this sphere. And because of that, I'll be kind of like the police and I will like intervene when something violates this set of norms.

Divia (1:01:11)

Mm

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. yeah.

Mm

Yeah, so I definitely feel like if I'm, there's, one thing is, know, I have, when people are at home, like my household, and then if I go out into the world, and I definitely feel like basically there's some sort of, have you read Kevin Simmler's essay about personhood?

Jessica Ocean (1:01:42)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

a long time ago, like maybe seven or eight years ago. Okay, yeah.

Divia (1:01:53)

Okay, I think about it a lot and it's, I'm not gonna try to summarize it here, I recommend it to everyone. But he's sort of like there's the person interface and there are people who can act as persons in the public sphere and not everyone can. Kids notoriously below a certain age, they kind of can't live up to the set of expectations that people have.

Jessica Ocean (1:02:01)

Mm -hmm.

Mm

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Divia (1:02:10)

of like at least a person sort of acting in a public. Anyway, and so I kind of feel like if I bring my kids somewhere, then there's like my sort of umbrella of like, ultimately it's on me. like people, mean, people can get mad at my kids or like them or whatever, but like ultimately they're sort of there under my, like under my authority because, because people can't really, like they don't have, yeah, they just don't have the standing.

Jessica Ocean (1:02:19)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Divia (1:02:36)

to be in public spaces without an adult. I'm sorry, like, I don't know, my oldest kind of does, but like when they're little, they don't. And so that sort of, yeah, I definitely see a different type of authority I have that filters through like, no, no, like I'm the one who's in charge of like, mediums, not the right word, but like interfacing with the outside world. And so some things, like something I used to think about was like, I'm like, okay, definitely gonna stop my kids from hitting people. It took me a little longer and this is maybe...

Jessica Ocean (1:02:38)

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

So, yeah.

Divia (1:03:01)

and be like, that should have been obvious to you, maybe. But it took me a little longer to be like, right. And if my kid is walking in front of someone who's going somewhere, I'm just going to move them because I'm like, that's actually not OK with me. would never do that. I'm not willing to do that. And I brought them there. I'm not willing to have them do Whereas there's some other things where I'm like, I also would never scream loudly in a public place, don't think, unless something really extreme are happening.

Jessica Ocean (1:03:21)

Yeah.

Divia (1:03:30)

But that's one where I'm like, nah, I don't know, depends on the place. But I'm not necessarily going to stop my, not that, I mean, it's like, one thing is logistically easier to move someone than to stop them from making loud noises. But like, I'm not even going to, like, yes, of course I will leave the library. Of course I would leave the restaurant. If we're in an airport and someone's screaming, I'm kind of like, well, I know they deserve to be here too. It's more like where I land on that one too.

Jessica Ocean (1:03:35)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yes.

Yeah.

Yeah, so the thing that you're describing here where you're sort of like in charge of making sure that the collective has their shit together in a person -y way in public, that makes sense. The thing that, well, the thing that I was describing is kind of like an epiphany had less to do with other people and more to do with like something like what environment do I want to live in or something? Like, how do I describe it? It's like if I'm at home or...

Divia (1:04:06)

Yeah.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:04:23)

like, again, and this is me and some imaginal people, like imaginal kids or whatever, because I don't have them yet, but like, there's a way that I envisioned before I sort of understood this thing about like really young kids and like theory of mind where I would hopefully simply bring them into the world I want to live in, which is one in which everybody is sort of like in, you know,

Divia (1:04:29)

Sure, yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:04:51)

Like in charge of their own sovereignty in some particular way. And like, there's no sense that like, there's like rules coming down from on high or something like that. And, or something like the rules are only as, as real as they actually need to be. Like if you've, you know, if you go into a, into a company and you all agree on a particular set of rules and you've agreed on the rules, but it's not like they're magical abstract things that came out from nowhere. It's like, no, like you entered into a contract, right? And.

Divia (1:04:55)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:05:21)

the thing that felt, how do I describe it? Like, like a bit of a light bulb was, was something like there's an, there's a, I don't want to say age, but like a developmental capability below which like you sort of can't do that. It seems like you can't do that kind of negotiation, but you can do like, I am the world. I'm creating the world for you and the world will be this way. And it will have these sorts of like,

leavers and yeses and nos. And I have to decide what that is. I have to decide what the moral rules of that are. But like, but it's kind of in service as well of like me being able to live my life well and me being able to like, like the difference between like we don't hit versus don't hit me or something. I don't know if I'm explaining this very well. It's sort of, yeah.

Divia (1:05:56)

Mm

Yeah, I it's interesting. I'm not sure, like, I think we may have different takes on it, which is part of what I'm trying to draw out. Like, it seems, it seems, it's very interesting to me.

Jessica Ocean (1:06:15)

Yeah. Yeah. I, again, it's, I think it's like, there's definitely something that I prefer all else being equal, which is like to be able to figure out where everybody's like needs and or boundaries are or something. And like in, in practice, like, and it's more just that I've now seen a couple of situations where I'm like, my strategies for doing that totally wouldn't work. Like they just wouldn't work. like, I would have to try something else. You know, I think that's like, that's the rough.

Divia (1:06:39)

Mm

I think I also, like, I think I may have less of that. don't, like, my guess is there's some also different perspective about, like, adult things too, but I might be wrong.

Jessica Ocean (1:06:54)

I don't know. Maybe, maybe. Yeah. I don't know. Can you say more about

Divia (1:06:58)

Yeah, I'm not sure. like, I guess when you talk about, like it seems like pretty fundamental how you were like, imagine what it's like to be them or something. And I think the way...

Jessica Ocean (1:07:07)

that's sort of like one thing, right? That's like one piece of, you know, living in a society, tiny society.

Divia (1:07:14)

Yeah, sure. No, and I'm not claiming that I... My guess is I don't quite understand where you're coming from. I think there's something that makes sense to me about it where you're like, there's certain type of moves that you sort of thought would be practical with young kids, but now you're like, it seems like not practical to do that type of move. Does that seem true?

Jessica Ocean (1:07:30)

Yeah, yeah. Let me see if I can try and think of a different example. Like, okay, so one example would be like about food, right? So there's a way in which I could give, I could sort of like hold a stance that's like a kid has, is the decision maker for them or something like that.

Divia (1:07:35)

Good.

Mm

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:07:58)

And I'm going to like negotiate with that or something. I'm not quite phrasing this right, but like the locus of control is over there and then somehow. And then there's another way I could frame it. It's something like, I am, I am just going to decide something like what is best for you. it's not the right framing, like what exists in the environment? Like, you know, you can eat whatever you want as long as it's in the fridge or something like that, you know, like, and that comes from like the things I know about food.

Divia (1:08:03)

Yeah.

-huh. -huh.

Okay.

Jessica Ocean (1:08:28)

which they don't necessarily know about food. like, to the extent, like, I know it's something like I do have a lot of confidence that I would like know better about particular things in that realm that like, sort of end up functionally becoming rules. Rule is not quite the right word, but like constraints that I have imposed unilaterally is maybe one way to put it. That like,

Divia (1:08:29)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:08:57)

I, if I were trying to go very far on the, you know, like, like taking children seriously, that kind of philosophy and stuff, like if I were to try and use my understanding of what that is, it's like I wouldn't be holding that particular authority or something. Maybe, yeah.

Divia (1:09:03)

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah, no, and it's possible. I mean, I'm an unschooler. It's possible that I don't, though I certainly like, yeah, it's interesting. I don't know that I have too much more to get into it. Like, I think everybody is like, no, no, you shouldn't like offer your toddler antifreeze to drink in case they like it, because it's sweet. Like, obviously, like everybody agrees on certain things.

Jessica Ocean (1:09:15)

Yeah.

you

Anyways, yeah, yeah, this may be.

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. I think also maybe one of the other things I got respect for was like something like you're not going to be able to operate in a moral vacuum. Like you're going to be making moral choices and you're going to be like doing a like, this is how we do things here. Even if this is how we do things here is we don't have any set rules about this is how we do things here or something like that. Yeah.

Divia (1:09:43)

Mmm, definitely.

for sure. No, I definitely feel like I do a lot of, I mean, I'm sort of like, how could I not? definitely, like if there things I'd be like, no, like, yeah. All right. I think I may come back to that, but let me, let me see. So you, right. So you have, you're about to have your baby like any week now, right?

Jessica Ocean (1:09:59)

Yeah, yeah. I think I was maybe a little bit naive about that. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. So I'm like 30, almost 38 weeks. So yeah. yeah. So next, sometime in the next month, hopefully there will be, you know, a birth and a baby and a, you know, that's, yeah.

Divia (1:10:20)

It's so cool.

Yeah, could you, I don't know, could you say more about like how you, how you're hoping that'll go or how you see it or just like things that you think are gonna happen in the next few months for you?

Jessica Ocean (1:10:39)

Yeah. Do you have any more specific? I mean, that's very broad. Do you have any specific specifics on that?

Divia (1:10:44)

I don't know. Yeah, like, for example, I haven't brought this up on the podcast, but I know from Twitter you're working on a psych crisis thing. Like, you going to be like how much are you going be working when you have the baby or do you know or?

Jessica Ocean (1:10:52)

Mm -hmm. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. So, so currently what has happened is that the, got this very big government contract and we were hoping that, thank you. yeah, it's with a county or two counties actually to like run basically like mental health ambulances in like north of Sacramento. It's not exactly an ambulance, but that's like the two sentence, the one sentence description and

Divia (1:11:05)

Congratulations!

Good.

Jessica Ocean (1:11:22)

You know, we intended for those to be launched several months ago and then there were quite a lot of delays. like the launch, a lot of the launch work is happening like now, which was definitely not my ideal. Like that was, that was not what I was aiming for. And so the way I've been approaching the, the combination baby launch deadline is, cause I'm running it. Like I'm the executive director. making a bunch of these major decisions is, is like my focus.

Divia (1:11:27)

Bye bye.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:11:50)

now and every day until the baby is born is to like, be able to confidently hand off as much of the major decision -making as possible as quickly as possible. like with each, know, like that's pretty much all I'm focusing on in terms of that. And then I sort of, I mean, one of the things that's kind of good and kind of bad about, the combination baby launch situation is,

Divia (1:12:02)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:12:20)

I have a bunch of constraints, but they're all real constraints. Like I don't have a boss who's like, yes, you can have X amount of maternity leave. I'm like, I'm going to take the amount of time that like to be with my baby that I can and want to subject to some constraints. Like, like, is there something that is currently bottlenecking this, this project that cannot be done by somebody else? Luckily, most of the things that are in that category, A, I'm trying to minimize already and B,

Divia (1:12:24)

Mm

Right.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:12:51)

can be done like over the phone. And so basically what I'm in an era now or a period now where I'm like trying to maximize the amount of time where I know that I can trust I have like everything's handled as much as possible. I'm gonna be with my baby. I'm gonna sleep. I'm gonna like, know, breastfeed that will be, you know.

Divia (1:12:53)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:13:15)

And, and I'm like, can I get more of that time or can I get time like that? That's more, I'm more confident about, you know, I have a, like a full -time program director who is like, he's taking the lead on a ton of stuff. but yeah, and I don't really have a good answer of like, how much, like after the first, like month, two months, even three months, like how much will I want to be working? Like.

Divia (1:13:22)

Mm

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:13:42)

You know, because I really, really like, you know, this is a project I care about a lot and, like, I'm very invested in. So it's kind of different from like, like, can I take time off work that I don't really want to be doing? and also I have, because I'm kind of at the top of the hierarchy there, like more flexibility in terms of, like, I don't know, I have a sense and I don't know if this is going to be right, that I will probably end up wanting to do a bunch of like.

Divia (1:13:51)

Yeah, for sure.

Jessica Ocean (1:14:11)

having my baby with me while say talking to someone or on the phone or doing something like that, like doing something that is needed for the work.

Divia (1:14:14)

Mm

That's cool, you get the opportunity to do what feels right to you there.

Jessica Ocean (1:14:22)

Yeah. And so like, I don't, like, sort of don't know exactly how I'll feel with that, but that's like the intuition I've had is that I'll want to do that. Like I won't want to be completely out of the loop on the project, but I won't want to be like away from her where she's like off somewhere else. So, and I'm like, I've been a little -

Divia (1:14:41)

Yeah.

think that's what a lot of people want. It's obviously not what everyone wants. I've heard many people be like, no, no, it's not what I want. I think, I think like including surveys, you know, as I accept the wisdom that surveys are highly flawed instruments, but I think if people are surveyed, they also report wanting something like that quite often.

Jessica Ocean (1:14:47)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and, and like, I mean, part of it is I'm lucky that I'm in an era where like a lot of stuff can be done remotely. the, the one thing that's kind of annoying that is really specific to the work that I'm doing is we were, we're setting up an emergency response system. And so like, I can't take the baby on the van. Like that is just like, it's too much of a risk. Like I also haven't, you know, my, my colleague is going and riding, riding along with police today and I haven't gone along with them because I don't want them to have to take a pregnant person.

Divia (1:15:06)

Yeah.

Mm.

Right. Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:15:29)

on there, like, and so if it were any other kind of program, then it would be easier to take a with me, I think, but that is, there's kind of a, yeah, because of the kinds of risks that you're taking, even if I were comfortable with it, I think other people wouldn't, wouldn't be comfortable with it. So it's kind of a shame that like, we'll be hiring and training a lot of people to do that. And I will eventually be able to get in and ride along for a little bit of time.

Divia (1:15:43)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:15:55)

But like the shifts are 12 hours long. like the chance of me being able to be present for a whole shift for a while is yeah, it's realistically, I probably would be able to ride along for like a couple of hours without, without baby. So yeah, there's, there's a bunch of like logistical stuff there. Like the place is not near me. It's like two and a half hours away. So I have to go and come back. yeah. The thing about like having your baby with you, like I...

Divia (1:15:56)

Yeah.

That's a long time.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:16:25)

I'm kind of confused. The only explanation I have for like why this isn't already a thing is that, you know, most corporate environments were evolved to mostly have men in them and like they didn't have a lot of women or something. And so they just, it didn't come up and then there was a norm and then I don't know. Like that's my only.

Divia (1:16:28)

you

Thank

Yeah.

This seems like an open question for you. Yeah, I do think people's experiences vary a lot. like, I don't know, for me, which I don't think this is representative, I'm like, if I imagine like the first, I don't know, like a couple of weeks or maybe some people will be longer than I'm like, I could want physically recovering. Maybe we're like the first baby, like learning how to kind of do everything. And around like six weeks, I'm like, okay, well, things are like maybe more together, but there could be like a couple.

Jessica Ocean (1:16:45)

Yeah, like, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Divia (1:17:10)

hours or more or less in the evening where it's like pretty intense. And then for me, there's another inflection point that's like, okay, but, and there's certain point when my kid wants to get down on the ground and start like doing everything. I'm like, well, and then some people are like, but you could like just put the baby in a playpen. I'm like, well, maybe like maybe that works for some people. I don't know.

Jessica Ocean (1:17:11)

Yeah.

Yeah, that's how to, yeah.

Yeah. Yeah. And I think that like, I mean, one of the things is I'm in a, you know, my family system is me and my husband and he's actually like, in many ways got more.

It feels like integrating a baby into the work that he does, it feels more straightforward. Because like what I'm doing involves a lot of like interacting with like the professional gaze or whatever. Like, you you've got to like present and be like, hi, I'm a blah, whatever. Whereas he doesn't have that. Like it's, you know, the culture is a lot more informal and it's also like, we're working on how people work. Like, look, we've got a tiny person, you know, like.

Divia (1:17:50)

Got it.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:18:11)

and he's just, you know, time, there's a lot of things around like the way that he works that feels like that's going to be more, sustainable. yeah, I'm definitely like, there's a point when like kids start moving a lot where I'm like, well, I don't have a plan for that. Like I don't have a, you know, and also there's a thing long -term, which is like that I, you know, I'm currently in a position where I sort of like quote unquote work full time.

Divia (1:18:11)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:18:40)

as a salaried person, but that's like not what I hope to do long -term. Like, I don't exactly know what the time use is, but definitely like there's a vision that feels like possible that involves sort of like not cutting myself off from this like arena of work. Cause it's like, I really care about it. And it's like, it helps my soul, know, like my, I feel like I'm a real person in the world and stuff, but that also is not cutting off like kid.

Divia (1:18:42)

Mm

Right.

Yeah.

you, Emily.

Jessica Ocean (1:19:09)

life and, and, and I know that there are some ages in which that'd be harder than others. Like I, I'm already looking at like, yeah, yeah. Yeah. yeah. Exactly. Exactly. Yeah. Yeah. No. And, and, like that's, that's, know, we don't, we have not, I think there are not only questions we haven't answered. There are questions where I'm like kind of refusing to answer them right now. I'm like, I don't have the information, you know, and, and certain things around like,

Divia (1:19:15)

I mean, you can also get certain types of trans care for those ages if you feel comfortable with it.

Jessica Ocean (1:19:37)

childcare or like even like schooling and like education decisions and stuff. Yeah. I'm like, I currently don't have a child. like me with a child will know much more information, you know. Yeah. I think that like one of the things that has been in terms of figuring out like, what do I think is going to happen? Or like, what are my plans? And then at least like the next few months is trying to

Divia (1:19:41)

You know, so much more when you get there.

Jessica Ocean (1:20:03)

again, pull apart the advice or the information that's been given to people who operate under a lot of constraints. like, for example, people who like have an expectation with an employer that they're in an office that is not child friendly for like a specified number of hours per week, like that feels like a very different, like, when I when I think about like,

Divia (1:20:13)

Mm

Mm -hmm.

Jessica Ocean (1:20:30)

people who are in that situation talking about things like sleep. I'm like, okay, like one of the things my midwife said, which is like, okay, if you stay in bed for 12 hours, you probably get, you know, you'll probably get a chunk of sleep eventually, right? You know, if you, yeah, exactly. Whereas like, you know, and so there's like the, obviously the idea that like new parents are sleep deprived. I'm like, well, I expect that the sleep would be worse, but can we just compensate by doing a lot more of it? You know, for example, I don't know.

Divia (1:20:46)

I think that, yeah, most people do.

I think a lot of people can. I think I mostly can. I've heard different things, but yeah, it's worked for me mostly.

Jessica Ocean (1:21:00)

Yeah. No? Yeah, yeah.

Yeah. and like I've already, you know, as I've been in third trimester, I've needed more sleep and then I've taken more sleep and that's worked. I mean, granted it's not with a newborn, so. but yeah, so I don't know. It's like,

Divia (1:21:14)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:21:23)

One of the things I think is like the biggest, like, this kind of sucks or whatever is just like the facts of our life mean that where our family's involvement is much more like time limited, like our family is going to come visit us. But it's you know, it's measured in weeks. It's not measured in you know, months, whatever. Like that's kind of just the reality. Like they live far away. And certainly this is another thing that I guess I like learned from

Divia (1:21:37)

Mm

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:21:52)

the last couple of years is like the, if I don't think that the other person has motivation to be invested in my kid's life, then I'm probably right. Like, and like, there's a whole, you know, there's a whole like community house like thing, like let's raise kids in community, but actually like, I can see like multiple families together, cause they've sort of got like a trade thing going on, but like a bunch of single people who are like also with a kid.

Divia (1:22:03)

Yeah, that seems right.

Jessica Ocean (1:22:21)

I think there's more of a like, I think there's less of the actual skin in the game there that would translate into extra help.

Divia (1:22:28)

Yeah, I've definitely, I mean, we've tried various things over the years and known a lot of people who've tried various things and I do agree with your perspective.

Jessica Ocean (1:22:36)

Yeah. And so like that's made me more like, okay, well, A, it seems like actually like meeting other families who want to solve our problems together. Like, you know, want to help make each other's lives easier in a kind of, again, pretty straightforward trade way or involving like family who are like have a kind of investment. Yeah, that's felt like more, like I've tended towards more towards that and less towards like the, you know.

new, let's start a blah and then everyone will be a, you know, have some sort of paraphernalial relationship to the kid or something. Like not that that like is, if that happens, it's great, you know, but I'm sort of like not banking on it, if that makes sense.

Divia (1:23:22)

Yeah, that makes sense. It makes a lot of sense to me. And which isn't to say like we haven't had some good experiences of like roommates that our kids became friends with and they hung out and like we don't currently have any roommates, but we did.

Jessica Ocean (1:23:28)

Yeah. We're also trying to get all of our roommates and friends like long -term partners and family. like, that's our...

Divia (1:23:36)

Yeah, no, mean, of course, in some, like, then the trade off, of course, with like, when people do have families is that they could be pretty low slack themselves, and then people do things differently, and then I do think whatever. So it's, it's a whole thing. I do think I'm very pro community for the record, but I'm, I think, I think my like, perspective is the community is probably overrated in terms of childcare and underrated in terms of like, well being for everyone involved.

Jessica Ocean (1:23:44)

Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, and that seems like that seems to have been the case based on like the cases I've encountered. was a, about a year ago, I went to a retreat that someone here, that Jason Bennett, the neighborhood was organizing that was like children in community. was like people who either had kids or like wanted to have kids pretty soon who like meeting each other. And that was like one of the bigger takeaways, like asking the parents being like, what was the thing about children in community? And they're like, yeah, well actually.

Divia (1:24:26)

Thank

You

Jessica Ocean (1:24:30)

It wasn't the thing that I sort of hoped it would be or whatever. So I'm kind of like glad to have found that out now. Yeah.

Divia (1:24:39)

Yeah. Well, again, it seems like on very tracks with your other way of doing things to really try to research and see what other people are doing and seems to be how you approach things.

Jessica Ocean (1:24:48)

Yeah, yeah, I think so. Yeah, yeah. That's good, yeah. Yeah, I guess so, probably. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I think that it's possible, it's like, reason for this is like when I was younger, I think I had the opposite thing, which was like, nobody understands me, I'm not like anybody else, like I'm unique, I'm special.

Divia (1:24:53)

I mean, I'm remarking on it anyway. It seems like you do it more than most people I meet.

Okay, well, as an outsider, is at least what I have seen so far.

Jessica Ocean (1:25:18)

or something. And then like, as I got older, was like, actually, like, you can piece together a lot of stuff by like looking at the partial, sort of partial, I am unique, I am special, but also like, if you get a thousand other people's experiences and you sort of like look at the patterns, then probably that'll teach you something, you know.

Divia (1:25:18)

Mm

Right, even though you are unique, you could still...

makes me think about, I'm like, is that an, I'm not really an Enneagram person, but I'm like, it sounds like an Enneagram four type situation. I don't know. I've been told that that is, I am that. I'm like, that reminds me of me in a way that I, I should probably just not dig a deeper hole because I don't really understand the Enneagram, but yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:25:45)

okay, maybe, Yeah.

Mm -hmm. The specialness thing or the, or the piecing together the thousand case studies? Yeah. Yeah. Well, maybe, so can I then like use this, you know, see, I'm trying to see if there's, if there's a good question that would summarize this, basically like, you know, if you, given that you are talking to someone who is in my position.

Divia (1:26:20)

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:26:21)

and if you were like, I'd love to say something that would make, make things like easier or more rewarding for them down the track. Like not necessarily like it could be advice. It could be not advice, but like, but like, it could be in the flavor of what I wish I'd known, but it could be more general than that or something. Yeah.

Divia (1:26:34)

Hmm.

Okay, well one thing that I, and you may have heard me say this, I think I've said it on Twitter before, something that, one of my big updates, I think I was sort of slow to come to about my project of trying to understand parenting, is that I kept underestimating and then being like, I'm probably still underestimating, because I feel like this pattern in like underestimate this, and I try to account for it, and I'm like, nope, still underestimating it. The extent to which everyone I know,

is selected for being a particular type of nerd version. And I can really, I can try, I can be like, okay, wait a minute. Let me like try to look at the sample set of like, look, for example, I, one of my big places that I went to go learn things was there was a forum called the baby wearer. It's, think it's defunct now. I think it's shut down. It's just sad. I still keep, I still value the friendships with a lot of people that I met.

Jessica Ocean (1:27:25)

Mm

Mm

Divia (1:27:34)

met that way and have other ways of contacting them, but the forum itself doesn't exist. And I remember being like, this is some sort of like randomly selected group of baby. We're like, I didn't say that out loud, but I was sort of like, this is some babywares. So probably if I look at the base rates, this is, and then I was like, no, no, no, no, we're all here. It's like, has a particular vibe. We're all here because of this particular vibe. We all are like particular types of sensory issues with babies that want to be held all that. I was like, okay, fine. All right, fine. We're all, no, this is not anywhere near these people. It's a very selected in a bunch

Jessica Ocean (1:28:00)

This is actually all nerds. Yeah.

Divia (1:28:04)

of ways that I wasn't accounting for and then I'd be like okay fine let me like look at you know like all of my friends from college and I'm like well that's a whole other and they're like okay fine all my friends from okay fine I'm on this like I joined Golden Gate Mother's Group for a while and it's true like and I do think if I sort of zoom out enough I could be like all right well Golden Gate Mother's Group is big enough that it's and I do not feel very at home here it's just selected less for people being like me

Jessica Ocean (1:28:19)

Mm -hmm.

Mm.

Divia (1:28:32)

And it does seem different. It's selected for something. I don't, don't, sorry. Do know what Golden Gate Mother's group is? It's a...

Jessica Ocean (1:28:36)

no, I'm assuming it's like, no, what is it?

Divia (1:28:39)

It's a online, at least this is what I remember from like, you know, the decade ago when I was on it. It was like a, it was sort of expensive. So definitely selected for that. Like I think we had to pay $75 a year to be on this like forum. And then people would sometimes have meetups and there were a lot of posts. it was like, that one was very much like, everybody's complaining about their husband in a way that my friends don't do that particular activity. How interesting.

Jessica Ocean (1:29:02)

Mm -hmm.

Divia (1:29:04)

So this is, again, it's not advice that I don't know that it's relevant to you, but I think I kept trying to account for like where I was getting my samples from and then realizing that the filters were stronger than I thought.

Jessica Ocean (1:29:13)

Yeah, yeah, I... This is also like when I get advice or something. Like it's advice that depending on the person comes from, yeah, like a wider sample or something. There was something I was gonna say about this and I feel what it was.

Divia (1:29:21)

Mm -hmm.

Jessica Ocean (1:29:34)

just like, I guess this is, this is something that I have like a little bit of fear around in general, which is like something like needing to end up being in social spheres that I don't actually have that much resonance with because of the like more limited options in terms of people who are sort of invested in the same project being like people who are raising young kids or whatever. And like, I have, you know, I have one friend who

Divia (1:29:50)

and

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:30:03)

Her, her kid is grown now he's in college and she sort of like, it's like she woke up at the end of that and realized that like the people that she'd been spending the last like decade and a half with she'd actually have a lot in common with. And, and like part of me is like, that would really suck. You know, like if, and like, and I do think that both Malcolm and I are quite, like if, if anyone can, can like,

Divia (1:30:17)

Hmm.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:30:33)

build connections with and like bring together the people who are a given kind of weird, in particularly, you know, in the Bay, there's plenty of weird people in the Bay, like there's lots of them. then like I have more confidence in us than I think I would in, in a lot of people. but yeah, like that's definitely like, if I, you know, talking about the thing about like family and, and extended family and stuff like that, that like there are...

Divia (1:30:39)

Yeah.

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:30:59)

same pages I can be on with my friends, the ones who don't have kids, that I can't be on with, family members who might be like more invested in my kids. Like, almost like languages we can't share together. And so, yeah, I just like wonder about that. Like, if...

Divia (1:31:04)

Mm

Yeah.

Jessica Ocean (1:31:22)

there are ways that you end up with needing to navigate or negotiate social spaces that are just less easy to breathe in or something. As a result,

Divia (1:31:32)

Yeah, I definitely relate to everything you're in a bunch of like, and I, so I, am I remembering right that you're planning a home birth? Yeah, I think the first community that I found.

Jessica Ocean (1:31:35)

Yeah.

Yeah, yeah,

Which I don't know, yeah, if I can find, yeah, yeah. Okay, cool. I was just going to say that I think our second midwife is, you know, was yours or, yeah. Which is great. Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:31:49)

when I had my baby was the home birth community. sorry.

Yeah, I'm a big fan of Sue. Yeah, and I went to a lot of different, there were different sort of like postpartum groups held by the different home birth community people. And it was pretty good for a lot of things. And then I remember I hit some point where I was like, I see. We don't really, like I'm sort of starting to like, I don't know, feel all these weird type of ways because we don't see parenting the same way. And I think more of us were like on similar pages with really young kids.

Jessica Ocean (1:32:06)

Mm

Mm -hmm.

Divia (1:32:26)

like maybe more shared opinions about what to do in like the first week that we had a baby. And then I kept going and I was like, okay. And then I sort of fell into the, I ended up looking for an attachment parenting group, which I feel like, my impression is that people don't talk about, I don't know, like I feel like attachment parenting isn't in the zeitgeist as much as it was.

Jessica Ocean (1:32:33)

Yeah.

Divia (1:32:50)

when I, I don't know that I'm up to date with this, like guys, I think it's different now. But anyway, I found one and I went to some of the Leche League meetings and I ended up finding some, some people that I'm now still would say are quite good friends of mine through that. And that's how I found the San Francisco unschooling community. But then like...

Jessica Ocean (1:32:50)

Yeah.

Mm -hmm. Yeah.

Divia (1:33:09)

I said, is gonna be a long -winded answer. Like, it's just been different. And then there's, course, COVID happened. And I was sort of like, like we locked it pretty hard. And then it was like, all right, how can I socialize if I literally never see anyone in person or like very rarely? And that was sort of okay. I don't know. Like, I mean, I look back on it and I'm like, well, that seems sort of like a probably, it seems sort of weird that I did that. But what I actually did was I spent a lot more time talking to people on the phone.

Jessica Ocean (1:33:19)

Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm. Mm -hmm.

Yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:33:37)

and on Clubhouse at the time. I figured stuff out. don't know. think, definitely one, we moved to Reno and then I definitely see, I seemed more culturally foreign to me than San Francisco had, maybe if we'd stayed there longer. And then we moved to Austin, which I'm like, okay, this is more like what I'm used to compared to Reno. At least the people I've met. then, yeah, there's unexpected things. I don't know.

Jessica Ocean (1:33:54)

Mm -hmm. Yeah. Yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (1:34:05)

I think, so, sorry, I'm trying to give a less long -winded answer, but one thing is that I think I feel more at peace with it. It's kind of an obvious thing to say, but when I've really gamed out what my options are and I know I'm choosing them, because if I'm like, I'm sort of here and like, this is unsocially uncomfortable, whereas if I'm like, well, here's why I'm here and this really seemed like the best option and if it isn't working, then like, I can always invest more in like,

Jessica Ocean (1:34:21)

Yeah.

The trade -off, yeah.

Divia (1:34:32)

trying to research what the other options are and sort of treating that as like a whole project. Because I think like figuring out who the... And some people, once their kids go to school, then they kind of slot into that or they have some activity. Like, I don't know, kids do ice hockey and then that's kind of our... Like people sometimes find a thing that's sort of like pretty set and forget, but like if people move or if they don't have a thing like that...

Jessica Ocean (1:34:34)

Yeah, yeah.

Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Yeah.

Divia (1:34:58)

I consider it like a major side project in my life is like figuring that out.

Jessica Ocean (1:35:02)

Yeah, I guess like one of the things that feels the most like, and this is like a consideration across decades, this is not like a, you know, next month thing, is like...

Divia (1:35:10)

Mm.

Jessica Ocean (1:35:16)

The inside, there are two wolves and one of them is very ambitious and one of them is very like creative and loving and relaxed. And they actually get along really well, but in the real world, the people who meant who represent those wolves don't tend to or, or something. And, and so it's like, it feels like there are trade -offs of like, yeah, you could like meet the, the like, maybe like the, I'm going to stereotype massively, but like the home birth moms who are like making everything from scratch and they're like, you know, really invested in their kids and like.

Divia (1:35:22)

I don't.

I see.

Sure.

you

Jessica Ocean (1:35:46)

they sort of, their identity is sort of entirely around like the way in which their home life is set up in something, something. And then you've got the like high powered working mom who's like, yeah, I dropped my kid off for 40 hours in childcare. And like, you know, I have two nannies on speed dial or whatever. And they're like sort of never the twain shall meet. And, and like, there's some really important thing that one of them is protecting. And there's some really important thing that the other one is protecting for me and my soul as a person.

Divia (1:35:55)

Mm -hmm.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:36:15)

And like, you know, and like in my ideal world, I would simply like find and like trust fall into some community that just represented or like reflected those. But I think that the answer will be much more like hacky and individual and finding specific people and stuff. That's my guess. Because like, also like if I think again, like in the decades scale, I'm like, that's also what I want for my kids. You know, like I want...

Divia (1:36:16)

Right.

Yeah.

Yeah. Seems right. Yeah.

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:36:45)

to raise, like, I would love to have, you know, a kid who grew up in a family where they look back on it and they're like, yeah, I had, like, this is the kind of thing that was normal, you know, and this is like the, this like, we're really actually participating in like the world and like bigger scales and stuff, and also not having like a desiccated home life or, you know, whatever. Having like a very like loving, yeah.

Divia (1:36:56)

Okay.

Jessica Ocean (1:37:13)

So that's sort of like, it's a question. don't expect to like some answer it. Yeah. Yeah. Hey, look, we're making a podcast right now. They should totally just like reach out to me. If that's you, let's like friend date. Yeah.

Divia (1:37:15)

What if you find as many of your people who hold both of those things as possible? That sounds awesome. Yeah, no, if anyone, exactly, if anyone, please. Yeah, and this might be a good, I'm loving this conversation, but I should probably wrap up pretty soon. So I wanna just see, are there any other things that we should talk about? And then how can people find you and all of that?

Jessica Ocean (1:37:33)

Yeah.

Any other things we should talk about?

I mean, in, in general, I'm like, like the, the thing that I tend to be asking right now is like, how might I be diluting myself? And so to the extent to which like, you know, you or anyone else who's like got, you know, their own experience, like raising kids and doing all the other things we just spent an hour and half, whatever describing, has like tips for that. That's yeah.

Divia (1:38:10)

Mm

Jessica Ocean (1:38:15)

That's pretty much, I don't know what I'm.

Divia (1:38:17)

Yeah, I don't know. Nothing stands out to me, but again, if people who are listening have some ideas. And then how can people find you?

Jessica Ocean (1:38:19)

Yeah. probably easiest way is Twitter. it's, my handle is atrocious to describe, but it's, yeah, it's auto -translucence, but the A is the at symbol. So actually it's uto -translucence, because of character limitations. and yeah, that's probably the easiest way. yeah, I also have a

Divia (1:38:27)

Thank

We can link it in the show notes.

Nice.

Jessica Ocean (1:38:49)

Organization, it's called Psych Crisis, psychcrisis .org. You could check it out if you want to see what we're up to. Yeah. It's the whole, yeah. Yeah.

Divia (1:38:54)

Yeah, we could do a whole, I mean, that I'm sure it could be a whole different podcast that we didn't touch on. I've read about it some on your Twitter. sounds great that you're doing this. Thank you for helping people.

Jessica Ocean (1:39:03)

But yeah, Twitter's probably the easiest way. And I feel the need to plug Malcolm's Twitter as well, just because I feel like half the things that I'm talking about are things that we kind of talk about together, or there's a whole scene of people talking about them. I think he's, it was really bad. I think it's Malcolm underscore Ocean, but I'm not 100 % sure. I'm like, definitely Malcolm Ocean, I can't remember if there's an answer. Yeah, so that's, yeah, Malcolm.

Divia (1:39:13)

Yeah, sounds good.

I think so. He was talking to me. We'll link that too.

Jessica Ocean (1:39:33)

And thank you, yeah.

Divia (1:39:35)

Yeah, thanks so much for coming on. And I haven't, I don't know when I'm going to put this up, but if you're listening to it, then I've done it. I have not been recording podcasts, but I just turned 40 and part of my plan was to start recording more podcasts. So maybe, maybe I'll do it.

Jessica Ocean (1:39:40)

Yep.

Yes. yeah. saw that your, your party and stuff. So congratulations on reaching that milestone. Yeah. That's good. That is good. I'm liking thirties as well. They're pretty, I'm like, they've been better than the, I don't know, the trend line is really good. Well, I think the main thing is like life is real. Life is like increasingly real. And it like, it was like more bullshit when I was younger, like.

Divia (1:39:56)

Thank you. I'm very into it so far.

In the 20s? Yeah. No, you don't want to think of it that way.

Jessica Ocean (1:40:15)

I was in more environments in which things had to be bullshit and now it's like, nope, my life is full of real meaningful things. And I really love that. yeah, cool. Well, thank you so much.

Divia (1:40:16)

Yeah.

Awesome.

All right.