This post contains an affiliate link to my book.
Here's the speech I gave at Liberty Forum:
Hi, I'm Julie. This is the first public speech I've given in almost two years. Some of you may be wondering what happened to me. Why did I fall off the face of the Earth?
In case you didn't know, I became a mother. The whole motherhood thing is quite time-consuming. Anyone who asks what mothers do all day can suck it. Motherhood is challenging, rewarding, and vastly undervalued in our modern society.
Did I take a break from "liberty activism?" No. Every day, I am advancing liberty. I show my son true compassion and consent. I teach him to respect others and not take other kids' toys. We're still working on that part... taking turns can be hard.
My goal isn't exactly to raise a libertarian. When I announced I had a baby, I cringed at the "liberty baby" comments. You know what, let's not assign political views to newborns. They vote for boobs... and that's pretty much all they care about. Some never grow out of that.
My goal is to raise a well-adjusted human being. For a lot of reasons, clearly. But I also believe a society full of well-adjusted humans would naturally gravitate towards a more liberty friendly society.
Why? Because well-adjusted human beings already embrace the non-aggression principle. Maybe they don't know the term. They haven't read the "right" books. But they still live a peaceful life, not hurting anyone else.
"Don't initiate force against another human being" is "duh" to a well-adjusted human. But guess what? Ted Bundy didn't give a crap about your non-aggression principle. Hey, Ted, have you tried not killing people? Because listen, it's not a moral thing to do. Like, he would care...
I'm sorry, but we aren't going to solve gang violence by getting gang members to read so-and-so libertarian philosopher. What about the non-aggression principle does MS-13 not get?! Can't they just stop murdering people, OK?
It goes much deeper than that. These people do not embrace the non-aggression principle because they aren't well-adjusted. There's a childhood-to-prison pipeline. Studies have shown that the overwhelming majority of prisoners experienced childhood trauma.
Ted Bundy, for instance, had a traumatic childhood. He originally thought his mother was his sister and his grandfather was truly his father. Yeah... it was a mess.
And no, I'm not trying to justify anything he did. Let's be clear about that. What I am trying to say is that hurt people often hurt other people and that's a big problem in our society.
Childhood trauma can affect you for the rest of your life. Prisoners are far more likely to have experienced Adverse Childhood Experiences such as abuse, neglect, and witnessing alcoholism, drug abuse, and domestic violence in their homes.
Reducing this childhood trauma is key to moving towards a more libertarian society. A society where people generally respect one another and their belongings. There would be no need for a large government in this kind of society. But how do we get there?
The easiest thing to change is ourselves.
I urge anyone struggling with mental health or addiction to get help. Yup... you've heard that before. But let me speak from experience, don't wait until it's too late.
I have anxiety. I know. It's so trendy these days. Everyone and their mother has anxiety. I stubbornly refused to get help until it became downright debilitating. The fact that I'm standing in front of you today is a miracle since I was convinced that I was dying a few months ago.
I wish I got help sooner. It would have been easier and saved me a few emergency room visits. Those aren't cheap. Today, I am feeling so much better. There is a light at the end of the tunnel, so, please get the help you need.
Parents, moms especially, tend to neglect our mental health. We're so focused on taking care of another person that we may forget about ourselves. But our children need mentally healthy parents. You taking care of yourself is also taking care of your child.
Above all, give your children a childhood that they don't have to heal from. Make sure the cycle of mental illness ends with you.
From my parenting research, I've discovered how important the first three years of a child's life are. Children need tons of interaction and physical affection to develop into a well-adjusted adult. You cannot give a baby too much attention. It's impossible.
Yet, we live in a society where babies are separated from mom at a super young age. It's "standard" for moms to return to work when their baby is twelve weeks old. Twelve weeks.
About a quarter of American women return to work within two weeks after giving birth. At that point, the newborn does not even understand that he is a separate being from the mother. This is traumatic for both women and babies.
And no, I'm not about to go all socialist Elizabeth Warren on you. The idea of socialized daycare frightens me. Unlike me, socialists want to remove children from their homes as soon as possible.
Socialized daycare penalizes stay-at-home parents who get nothing. A better option is to further expand child tax credits. This means that parents will pay less in taxes- which opens up more choices to them.
Employers also need to realize that things have changed. This is no longer the days where an employee stays with a company for decades. Enough with the ping-pong tables and the "Take Your Dog to Work Day" so-called benefits.
Millennials want real benefits. Employers need to offer competitive benefits to retain good employees and that includes maternity and paternity leave. As well as a flexible schedule, part-time, and work from home options.
And no, I'm not calling for government intervention, libertarians. Settle down.
The Internet has also opened up new self-employment options for parents. Many "mommy bloggers" are making bank. I know parents who make money teaching English to kids in China via webcam in their pajamas. There are a ton of ways to make money online now.
I wrote and self-published a children's book during my son's nap time. It's called Nobody Knows How to Make a Pizza. It's based on "I, Pencil" and teaches kids about economic principles in a fun and engaging way.
This option was not available a decade ago.
I also design and sell shirts and mugs on my website: LibertyJunkies.com. I do this strictly on my schedule whenever I have time. This flexibility has allowed me to raise my child while also generating a little income to help with our family finances.
We need a culture that respects parenthood. Companies like Netflix are leading the charge. They offer a full year of paid time off to both mothers and fathers. Bravo.
We also need more parents who respect parenthood. Again, the first three years of their a child's life are so important. Children must develop a secure and healthy attachment to a caregiver or there could be major problems down the road.
We all have different life circumstances and financial situations. In some families, both parents must work full-time to be financially secure. They are doing the best they can and there are still ways for working parents to bond with their children- such as safely cosleeping to increase physical contact.
But there is an odd belief that all stay-at-home moms have rich husbands. That isn't the case. A typical middle-class family can live on one income. Yeah, it does require some sacrifice, but it can be done.
Here are a few ways to reduce your living expenses: Move to a smaller house. Buy only used cars. Shop at thrift stores. Eat at home. Stop going to Starbucks. Maybe even move to a cheaper part of the country.
Stop trying to keep up with the Joneses. You don't even like them. Who cares what they think? True freedom is found when you do what is best for you- and your family- without caring about what others think.
Sadly, there is a stigma against "stay-at-home" parents today. I use stay-at-home in quotes because it's not like we are chained to our homes. There's a belief that we somehow aren't contributing to society- because we don't have a paying job.
Our society is too focused on material items. We spend, spend, spend on things that we don't need. That's why so many Americans are tens of thousands of dollars in credit card debt.
Kids do not care about superficial things. They want your presence. They need less than you might think. Sticks and rocks make great toys, by the way. And they are cheap.
There's the tired ongoing debate on whether women can truly have it all. My (millennial) generation was raised to believe that yes, we can have it all. The Spice Girls told us so. Well, they lied to us.
Women can't have it all. But guess what? Neither can men. No one can! There are only 24 hours in a day. And believe it or not, moms can only be in one place at one time. Trade-offs will always exist. Something has got to give.
I think accepting that you can't have it all at the same time helps you from losing your mind. It's OK to neglect some things. Maybe your house isn't perfectly clean- ah, it can wait. The laundry isn't folded. Oh, well. You're not failing- you're prioritizing your time. No one's life is as perfect as it looks on Instagram.
Us women want to prove that we can do everything a man can do. Alright. But we often forget that men can't do everything women can do. Women can create humans. Humans! How awesome is that?! Let's celebrate that.
And yes, I understand that not every woman wants a child. Parenthood isn't for everyone. It's a huge commitment. There are plenty of people I look at and think, "wow, please do not reproduce."
Babies need their moms. And kids need their dads. Choosing a father is the biggest decision a woman will ever make for her child. Way more important than what kind of preschool to go to or how much screen time is too much?
Here's a sad truth: “The strongest predictor of whether a person will end up in prison, is that they were raised by a single parent."
It is then troubling that single-parent homes have more than tripled since 1960. Research suggests that growing up without a father can alter the structure of the brain making kids more angry and aggressive. Most school shooters come from broken families. 60 percent of rapists come from broken families. There's a trend here.
There's also a clear link between poverty and single parenthood. Nearly half of woman-headed-households are poor. Many of them are on government assistance. How are we going to end the welfare state with those statistics?
Kids do better when fathers are actively involved in their lives. Unfortunately, about 1 out of 4 children in America are being raised without a father. Much of this has to do with the dramatic rise of children being born out of wedlock. Almost half of all U.S. births happen out of wedlock.
This has bad societal consequences.
Divorce has also become all too common in our society. Yes, there are some valid reasons for divorce. Domestic violence being one. Witnessing regular domestic violence is likely more damaging to a kid than a divorce.
But we live in a throwaway culture. Too many people treat their spouses like iPhones. They get bored with the "old" model and trade it in for a new one. Kids suffer when marriage is treated so carelessly.
When divorce is deemed necessary, fathers should still play an active role in their child's life. The court system has, unfortunately, become biased against fathers. This needs to be reformed. Mothers, also, should not keep their children away from good fathers for petty personal reasons. Never use children as pawns. Parental alienation is child abuse.
And speaking of child abuse, the home must be violence-free. That means that parents must never hit each other. Not controversial, right? But that also means that parents must not hit their children. Now, we're opening up a can of worms...
Libertarians believe in parental rights. But do you have a right to hit another person? No. And I think especially not if that person is small and defenseless. Like a child is. Children are the worst people to hit.
Besides the moral arguments, hitting also called spanking hurts the bond between parent and child. Like I've said before, that bond is so important to raise mentally healthy children. Spanking teaches children to resent and not trust their parents. The opposite of what you want.
And there's evidence that spanking doesn't work to control behavior. Kids don't learn from their mistakes- they learn not to get hit. That means lying and hiding things from their parents. Further hurting the parent and child relationship.
"I got spanked and I turned out just fine" person on the Internet says. Well, debate settled then, right? No. Someone can have been spanked as a kid and turned out "fine." But they turned out fine in spite of being spanked, not because they were spanked.
Every study, ever, has found that spanking increases children's problem behavior and aggression. They are being taught that violence solves problems- that is it okay to hit someone out of love. How messed up is that?
Libertarians want to create an aggression-free society. We try to spread the "message of liberty" to others. But there's an underlying problem in our society: the breakdown of the family.
The future of liberty depends on strong intact families. Strong families are most likely to raise mentally healthy humans. Humans without trauma are less likely to hurt others. Imagine a world with strong families and communities that help one another- rather than relying on the government.
The state is trying to replace the family. It's time that the family fights back.
Thank you.
