Video summary
The podcast critically examines the detrimental effects of traditional daycare settings on infant development, highlighting the separation of babies from their primary attachment figures and placing them in institutional environments with high caregiver-to-child ratios ranging from five to one up to eight to one. This arrangement causes salivary cortisol levels—the biological marker for stress—to spike dramatically, thrusting infants into states of chronic distress within loud, overstimulating settings filled with crying children and transient caregivers who are frequently absent due to illness. The speaker argues that these conditions represent the worst possible caregiving scenario available, suggesting instead a hierarchy of care options where the ideal is having a mother or father present; if unavailable, kinship bonds involving extended family members offer the next best emotional investment. For those unable to afford private help, utilizing a single surrogate caregiver like a nanny in one's own home remains superior to institutional centers because it maintains agency over who cares for the child and allows parents to observe care directly through cameras or visits, ensuring the child does not experience the high-stress environment of a group facility. Central to this argument is the concept that parents often exhibit a "schizoid response" when dropping children off at daycare, effectively shutting down their empathy and ignoring the suffering of infants who cannot be simultaneously soothed by one adult amidst eight crying babies. The speaker challenges parents with attachment disorders or those feeling inadequate for handling their own child's needs to consider how they are handing over vulnerable infants to overwhelmed staff without questioning whether that specific caregiver can provide necessary soothing. This dynamic is further complicated by the fact that many children enter primary school and adolescence completely dysregulated, a condition directly linked to what the speaker identifies as an ongoing mental health crisis rather than a mystery. The root cause of this widespread regulation failure lies in neglecting the critical first three years of life, often referred to as "the room where it happens," which occurs preverbally before children can consciously remember events yet profoundly shapes their personality and emotional baseline. To support these claims, the discussion relies heavily on decades of longitudinal research starting with John Bowlby's foundational work in attachment theory during the 1960s, specifically referencing his "stranger situation" studies conducted by researchers like Beatrice Beebe. These experiments consistently demonstrate that if a child is not securely attached by twelve months, there is a seventy-two percent probability they will remain insecurely attached twenty years later, correlating with depression, anxiety, and borderline personality disorder. The speaker clarifies the nature of attachment inheritance as "generational expression" or the inheritance of acquired characteristics rather than genetic determinism; while humans are born with constitutional predispositions such as aggression and dysregulation—evidenced by newborns shifting from happiness to screaming in seconds—the environment created by caregivers determines how these traits manifest. An anxiously attached mother is likely to produce an anxiously attached child, but this cycle can be broken or reinforced based on the quality of interaction within those formative years before age nine or ten when memory becomes spotty and conscious recall begins. Historical context provided in the transcript reveals that John Bowlby famously campaigned against hospital maternity wards where nurses would separate newborns from their mothers immediately after birth, placing infants in rooms with other screaming babies while mothers slept to "rest." This practice ignored the mammalian instincts of smell and voice recognition, leading many children into insecure attachment patterns before they could even form a bond. Bowlby's subsequent research across various cultures confirmed that secure attachment is universal and critical for emotional regulation, advocating instead for skin-to-skin contact and calm soothing tones from a physically present primary caregiver to help infants transition from the stormy seas of newborn dysregulation to homeostasis comparable to sailing in sunny Caribbean waters. The speaker emphasizes that without this continuous presence during the first three years, children fail to learn how to manage their internal states, resulting in the behavioral and emotional difficulties seen later in life. The conversation concludes by addressing the complex interplay between nature and nurture, utilizing an analogy of a cow cutting off its own leg for stew to illustrate how the raw materials one is born with are expressed through behavior which then becomes the environment shaping future generations. While acknowledging researchers like Robert Plomin as giants in behavioral genetics who study these predispositions, the speaker insists that early childhood experiences override genetic potential regarding emotional security. The transcript also includes a brief sponsorship segment for Athletic Brewing Co., promoting their non-alcoholic brews as an alternative to alcohol without hangovers, but this commercial break does not alter the core psychological arguments presented throughout the discussion on attachment theory and infant care standards. Ultimately, the message is clear: ignoring early attachment in favor of institutional daycare sets children up for a lifetime of emotional challenges that could have been prevented by keeping them with loving, consistent caregivers during their most vulnerable developmental window.
Read the full video transcript
Talk to me about daycare. What's the
problem with daycare?
Well, daycare as I said, um
it's basically separating babies from
their primary attachment figures,
putting them in institutional settings
with ratios of no less than five to one,
usually eight to one caregiver to child
ratio.
And
you're basically sending that child's
cortisol levels the research shows that
salivary cortisol levels goes through
the roof. So, babies go into high stress
states. Now, they're separated from
their mother's bodies and they're
separated from the person in the world
who's meant to make them feel safe.
They're in a loud overstimulating
setting with babies crying and
caregivers, transient caregivers,
alternating and some being absent and
it's a new caregiver cuz they're always
out sick and it's it's the worst the
worst possible care caregiving situation
for a child. There are so many better if
you have to work the best is
a mother or father, whoever's the
primary attachment figure. The next best
is kinship bonds, which are family or
extended family members who have a more
similar investment to children uh
emotionally. The next best would be a
single surrogate caregiver or a nanny or
a babysitter who's going to be an
alternative attachment figure to that
baby which will provide them with some
sense of security and care for them in
your home. And if you can't afford that,
then share a caregiver. That's a big
thing in California where they
uh will split the cost of one caregiver
so that caregiver is now taking care of
two or three children. You have now
reduced the ratio and that child is
being cared for in your home. And you
have agency over that.
>> Basically private daycare where you
don't have to travel.
>> And it's in your home. And so, you have
agency over who that person is, how they
care for your child. You can put cameras
in your house if you want. You can see
what they do. You can observe them. You
know who's taking taking care of your
children.
>> Uh-huh.
And your child isn't going into this
like high stress state of screaming,
crying. If you go into a daycare center,
you would cry.
I would say to parents, you drop them
off and you have this schizoid response
where you shut down what you're feeling
and go to work. But if you knew what
happened in those daycare centers, if
you heard those babies cry. What does
happen? What happens in daycares? Crying
babies because
the bottom line is if I handed you eight
babies
and you're one person, could you soothe
all those babies in distress at the same
time?
>> convinced I could soothe one of them.
Okay. Now I'm giving you eight.
And so what's happening is those one
person cannot, you know, parents who are
have attachment disorders of their own
think, "Oh, it's better for somebody
else to care for my child cuz I'm not a
good I can't handle it."
Without thinking, "Who's this person
that I've just handed my baby to and how
are they going to care for five to eight
children
and soothe them when they're in
distress?" And so parents just it's like
they shut down a part of their It's like
they should they shut down their
empathy. It's like they have a schizoid
response with empathy where they cannot
see their baby's vulnerability or their
or their baby's suffering.
What are your favorite studies that show
how we shouldn't ignore early attachment
in childhood?
John Bowlby is the father of attachment.
You need go no farther than John Bowlby,
but you could look at all of the
what they call the stranger situation
studies, which they've been doing since
the 1960s. They have repeated this
experiment over and over. In fact, I was
um
there's a researcher named Beatrice
Beebe in New York. She's very famous and
I was in some of her videos because when
I was a young social work student, I did
some volunteering
um
in a stranger situation study. Again,
this this this situation is repeated
over and over and over again. It's It's
the most well-known attachment security
um study. And it it sort of goes
something like this. The mother and baby
are playing in a room, a stranger walks
in,
um the mother walks out of the room, the
mother walks back in and there's a
reunion. It's sort of they they look at
the baby's reactions, they look at the
interaction between the mother and the
baby, the interaction between the
stranger and the baby, they look at the
reunion between the mother and the baby.
So, this is something that's done over
and over. We have so much longitudinal
research on attachment security going
back to the '60s. So much research to
show that attachment security, if you're
not securely attached at 12 months, then
72% of those babies 20 years later will
not be securely attached. And that
insecure attachment is tied to
depression, anxiety,
borderline personality disorder. Um so,
we have the research. The research has
been there for many years. We just now
we have Now we have the neuroscience
research and the epigenetics research to
support the attachment research. Let's
square the circle with the heritability
of attachment style for me.
The heritability of attachment style?
No. So, it's generational expression.
So, it I I sort of bulk at the idea of
inher- inheritance. It's inheritance of
acquired characteristics. So, you don't
inherit it genetically, you inherit
sensitivity genetically, but you inherit
through acquired characteristics,
meaning your environment. Mhm. A mother
who is insecurely anxiously attached
will more likely produce an anxiously
attached baby. A mother who is
avoidantly attached will more likely
produce an avoidantly attached baby. A
mother who has a disorganized attachment
and is a borderline personality
disordered kind of patient will more
likely produce a child who has a
disorganized attachment and probably a
borderline personality disorder.
>> Mhm. So, um we call it generational
expression of mental illness. So, in in
um inheritance of acquired
characteristics.
I guess it's interesting to think about
predisposition
versus predetermination. With stuff like
this, Mhm. the raw materials are there.
I've always thought this about I'm a big
Plomin fan. I think he's one of the best
researchers of all time. He's the what
the fifth most cited psychologist in the
20th century.
>> Mhm. Uh this the guy that the kind of
the grandfather of behavioral genetics.
I think he rules.
And um
when I think about
the first few years of a child's life,
it's such a weird confluence of
what were the raw materials that you
were made of? Yeah. How are they
expressed in the people who made who who
gave you them?
They are expressed in behavior. Yeah.
>> And that behavior happens to be the
environment. It'd be like
it would be like a cow that cuts its own
leg off to then cook it in a stew. You
know, like the very thing that it's made
of is the thing that's that's creating
it. And um that's a [ __ ] horrific
analogy. But
it seems so unfair. This is what it I
sort of came back to when I started to
think deeply about behavioral genetics
and attachment style. That you have
presumably an anxiously attached mother
has the raw materials to be anxiously
attached.
And then is presenting in an anxiously
attached way. Yeah. Which means that the
child that has the raw materials to be
anxiously attached gets that reinforced.
And all of this happens preverbal. All
of this happens before you can even
remember. I can't remember anything
basically before age like
nine or 10. And they're really really
spotty memories.
>> you know that you know the song from
Hamilton, you want to be in the room
where it happens. The room where it
happens is zero to three. Hm.
That's what it means to be in the room
where it happens. And no one wants to
talk about the room where it happens cuz
they can't remember it consciously cuz
it's preconscious memory, but it's what
shapes your personality. Hm.
So, nature versus nurture is always an
interesting question because we do we
are born with a constitution meaning
constitution is the amount of aggression
we're born with. Babies are all born
aggressive.
>> Aren't the most aggressive people on the
planet three-year-olds?
>> So, well, no, actually. Babies are born
dysregulated and babies are all born
aggressive. So, you know, people get it
wrong. People
people think that babies are born
regulated and we dysregulate them by
neglecting them or abusing them. No,
actually babies are born dysregulated
uh with highs and lows. I mean, if you
ever just observe a baby, um infants
that are newborn infants, they will go
from being happy one second and zero to
60 in three seconds. Boy, they'll be
screaming
>> Just the most bipolar little blobs.
>> little blobs. Okay, but they're not
blobs. They're incredibly
uh sort of present, but they have no
emotional regulation. And it is by that
skin-to-skin contact, that calm soothing
tone of voice of the primary attachment
figure. Every time the baby's in
distress, the mother soothes the baby.
The way I would describe it is babies
are born like sailing a sailboat in the
Pacific in a storm.
This is how babies are born.
By having a mother physically and
emotionally present in those first three
years who is calm and present and loving
and soothing.
You get the baby not You don't want to
get the baby flatlining. That's not what
we call homeostasis. We call homeostasis
more like sailing in the Caribbean on a
sunny day.
There's waves, but you know, you can
manage them and then, you know, they're
kind of manageable and pleasant and
that's where you want to get the baby.
But you cannot do that if you throw your
baby into a daycare setting. If you
disappear 10 hours a day and go to work
and the one person that's meant to help
them to learn these things, they're not
learning. So we have children who are
going into primary school years and then
adolescence, um, completely
dysregulated, which is why they're all
breaking down in in this mental health
crisis. It's not a mystery, but you have
to go back to the room where it happens.
But aggression
aggression is one of the things that
you're born with constitutionally. You
know, in the old days you used to go
into a hospital into a maternity ward.
Thank goodness John Bowlby got rid of
the maternity wards. You know, John
Bowlby went into the hospitals in the UK
and he said, "No, no, no. Those babies,
they need to lie in with their mothers.
They need to be They could They've come
out of their mothers
>> a maternity ward? It was a room where
they took the babies from the mothers so
the mothers could rest and they took
them. So now nurses who they didn't
recognize this You know, we're just
mammals. Didn't recognize the smell or
the voice. Couldn't find their mothers'
eyes because they saw their mothers'
eyes when they were born cuz they would
show you the baby. Here's your baby.
Now, bye. And they would take the baby
away. Put it in this maternity room with
other screaming, crying babies and the
mother's sleeping and they're telling
the mother, "This is normal."
I mean, like cuckoo, right? So he said,
"Wait a second." You know, he studied
cultures all all the world. He wrote a
big book like this called Detachment,
which I recommend everyone who has a
baby to read, and another book like this
is big like this called Separation,
where he studied cultures all over the
world. Universal.
Right? The idea that
attachment security is critical to a
baby's
emotional regulation and conditioning.
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