This week, Farai interviews New York Times bestselling author Julie Lythcott-Haims on what adulthood— or “adulting”— looks like for millennials and Gen Zers, and how generally we can all live with more authenticity in her new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. Then in the weekly segment, Sippin’ the Political Tea, we revisit an enlightening conversation about abortion access for Black women and girls between Farai, Georgetown law professor and OBP legal contributor Tiffany Jeffers, and UC Irvine law professor, Michelle Goodwin.
Farai Chideya:
Hi folks. We are so glad that you're listening to Our Body Politic. If you have time, please consider leaving us a review on Apple Podcast. It helps other listeners find us, and we read them for your feedback. We're here for you, with you, and because of you. Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
This is Our Body Politic I'm Farai Chideya. Becoming an adult has never been easy, but today we have COVID, violent extremism, climate change, and an unstable economy. People in their 20s and 30s are under a lot of added pressure as they launch independent lives. So what does it take to get adulting right? And how is growing up today different from what it used to be?
Farai Chideya:
Julie Lythcott-Haims is a New York Times bestselling author of How to Raise an Adult. She did a viral TED Talk about how parents can stop micromanaging their children's lives. Her latest book is Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. And Julie speaks directly to young adults about what they can do to lead successful fulfilling lives.
Farai Chideya:
So I have to say, first of all, I absolutely love your newsletter. Writing a good newsletter takes a lot of time. And one of your recent ones was called Our Eyes Locked As She Drew My Blood. It really resonated with me. As along with my friends, I'm doing all of my middle-aged healthcare and lifestyle adjustments, and we do a lot of coverage of health and wellness on Our Body Politics. So, tell us about the experience that you shared.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Yeah, so that experience was sitting atop the larger experience of my having been body shamed by a doctor at my student health center back when I was 20. And I'm 54 as we chat today. So I've been carrying the memory of that shame. I went in for bronchitis and came out with a sheet describing a 1200 calorie diet. And I learned then, that potentially any doctor would not be able to see past my weight to the actual underlying need. I'm the child of a public health doctor who has been taught to fear healthcare because of how I was treated and mistreated over the years.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And so this most recent story, I'm getting my blood drawn and I had one arm already bandaged and she looked at it and sort of, "Why is your arm already bandaged since I'm about to draw your blood?" I was like, "Yeah, I was here yesterday." She was like, "You were?" I said, "Yeah, I'd been putting off a blood draw from a year ago that my doctor wanted and I'm feeling sheepish," and I'm explaining. And she said, "What about your mammogram?" And I said, "Well, I'm a little behind on that too." And she said, "So am I?" And I said, "You are?" And she said, "Yeah, I'm afraid." And then she walked toward me and she pressed her hand into her and said, "I'm just worried there's something there. And I'm so scared." And all of a sudden, we weren't the phlebotomist and the patient, we were two women, just eyes locked, with eyes demonstrating, I'm afraid, and yet I feel safe with you in this moment. God knows why. And we ended up having this dialogue and so on.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
We ended up exchanging cell numbers to say like, "I'll get my mammogram. I'm going to tell you when I get mine." And I was blown away that somebody within the healthcare system, was herself afraid, to go get the information that would allow her to make better decisions about her life. And so my advocating to her for why she should go in, helped me realize, "Julie, why are you putting it off?" And then I realized, I need to tell her, invite her to tell me why not to be afraid, because I'm gaining so much strength in advocating for her. Maybe she'll gain strength in advocating for me.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. I mean, I have so many reactions to that. First of all, I had two dear ones diagnosed with breast cancer last year. Both of them got great treatment and our healing and I'm grateful for that. Two, one of my formation childhood events was that there was a family that was very close to my family, a coworker of my mom's. And she felt a lump, didn't want to think about it. And it turned out to be metastatic breast cancer by the time she actually got treatment. So, part of my childhood was marked by this woman who was like an aunt to me passing away and her daughter's having to move out of town to live with their father, her ex-husband.
Farai Chideya:
So all of this resonates and it's so hard to just click into this. And also, I will say I resonate with the fat shaming. I'm significantly overweight, but the reality is shaming never helped me. My shaming myself, my mother shaming me when I was younger, and doctor shaming me never worked on weight. I need positive motivation, not shaming. So, kudos to all of that. And may we proceed with health.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
May we proceed with health. May we not let others' opinions shame us out of living fully and well?
Farai Chideya:
Yeah, that could be a whole other show. So, let's turn to your books. You worked with young folks for years when you were a dean at Stanford. And your previous book, How to Raise an Adult, focuses on ways that parents over-manage their children. You did a viral TED Talk. You talked about how parents shouldn't worry as much about what college their kids get into. As you put it, "The habits, the mindset, the skillset, the wellness to be successful, wherever they may go." And now you've got this new book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult. What made you write it?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Well, the first book appears to be for parents and it is, but I'm no parenting expert. I was a college dean, as you've said. And I was noticing the rise of helicopter parenting at the university level. And so I was concerned about how this over management, this micromanagement of 18 to 22 year olds, was undermining their agency and their resilience and contributing to poor mental health. My purpose with that book was to advocate for the right of young people to live freely unfettered by this micromanagy style of parenting.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
So this new book is just now directly for the young people. Now, after writing that book for parents about what to do differently. Now I'm squarely in the corner of the young people who have articulated, "I don't want to adult. I don't know how to adult. Adulting is scary." I get it. It is scary. And you know what? You've got this. You do hard things. You're going to be able to figure this out, and I'm here rooting for you. And that's the voice I try to take in this book.
Farai Chideya:
Just give us a little teaser about what you discovered about adulthood along the way.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Well, first and foremost, it's simply the reverse of childhood. People say, "I don't know how to adult." I think it begs the question, what is adulting? And my definition is, it's the opposite of childhood. You are more or less responsible for yourself. And it is work, and it is at times scary. But on the other side of that work, and fear is the delicious sense of, "Hey, I'm in charge of myself." It's not up to someone else to decide where I go, who I am, what to study, what to do for work, who to love, who to be." All of that.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
The other thing I want to say is things have changed. Today's millennials and older Gen Zs, often have a grandparent who's like, "When I was your age, I had a job. I had a..." It's like, "Okay, grandpa. Things have changed. At a macro economic level, in many cities today, someone in their 20s simply cannot afford to rent an apartment, let alone buy a home. We have constructed a society that has made it inhospitable to be a young adult in many major metropolitan areas. And guess what? That's not their fault.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
So my book is, I think, offering strategies for how to harness the power of you, the individual. To look after yourself, and your belongings, and your business, and your mental health, and make good choices in order to do the work that lights you up. Frankly, even if that means leaving the Bay Area where I live, and moving to a more affordable place so you can have the life you imagine. That's definitely one of the messages of the book.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And the other key message is stop pleasing others. They have no idea who you are. You're not a dog on a leash. You're not someone else's project. You get to decide. This book centers the agency of every single young adult.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. I just want to name some of the people that you profile in the book. I'm going to give you three names. And after each one, could you just let us know a little bit about them, their life stories, lessons they illustrate about adulting. So let me start with Kyle. Who is he?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Kyle is a kid who grew up in Appalachia, had a mom who was addicted to opioids and his father had passed away when he was 12. So Kyle was the "man of the family" with a really troubled mom and a younger sister whom he had to look after. Then he went off to college, really fearful of leaving his sister behind. But ultimately, he has lived the American dream in the sense of, got the education, did what he needed to level up his skills, so that he could be even more impactful at trying to not just assist his family and himself, but to be of use to others in the world.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. And then another one of the people you interview is Zuri.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Yeah. So Zuri is an African American woman. I should have said, Kyle, I mentioned he was from Appalachia. I should have made clear, white male. Zuri is an African American female. Went to Spelman, wants to be an actor, comes to LA and is hustling, hustling, hustling to go to those auditions and try to get shows and whatnot. And working as a nanny, and teaching yoga, and still needs to be on public assistance in order to just make ends meet in that very expensive market known as Los Angeles.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And ultimately, gets her big break, and gets cast on a TV show. And then a friend's like, "Let's go to lunch." And the friend clearly expects Zuri is going to treat. And the friend orders, wine and dessert and all the other things in between. And Missouri's like, "I'm still on food stamp. I've been cast on this show, but I don't have an income yet." Right? And the friend was-
Farai Chideya:
Oh boy, I was like, "Woo! Entitlement."
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Entitlement. And Zuri learned, my no, is essential. I need to be able to draw boundaries around what I will do and won't do. I need to speak up for myself and not let other people push their presumptions onto me.
Farai Chideya:
The final person I want to ask about. And you have many more case studies in this book, is Jamie.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Ooh, Jamie, the Southern California, Latino surfer. Jamie's the child of immigrants from Mexico, I believe. If I recall correctly, Jamie's the youngest out of, I think, nine siblings. And growing up his dad was super clear. You're going to a school here that's teaching you how to use your brain. And I need to also teach you how to use your body and your hands, and to develop a work ethic. So he said, when he was young, I think Jamie was 10. "You're going to go to your grandfather's peanut farm this summer in Mexico. I'm going to take you down there. You're going to work the farm every day with your grandfather. You're going to earn money, and you're going to earn your way back to California." And Jamie's like 10. Like, "Dad, what?" And that's what happens.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And Jamie thought his father was the cruelest thing. But over time, Jamie realized as he went summer after summer and really learned how his blind grandfather managed to ply his wear, sell those peanuts in the stalls, how he learned to discern which customer was, which given his blindness, he was able to pick up on different clues. Jamie was learning so many life lessons around hard work and perseverance and character from his grandpa, and his father. Ultimately, Jamie's in the chapter on building character because of those life lessons embedded in him young about what really matters, and how to have perspective.
Farai Chideya:
That was Julie Lythcott-Haims author of Your Turn: How to Be an Adult.
Farai Chideya:
And coming up next, we hear more from Julie, including the perils of people pleasing. Plus lawyers, Tiffany Jeffers and Michele Goodwin discussed the impact that an overturned Roe, could have on women of color. That's on our body. Politic
Farai Chideya:
Welcome back to Our Body Politic. If you're just tuning in, we're talking with bestselling author, Julie Lythcott-Haims, about the challenges of growing up today and her book, Your Turn: How to Be an Adult.
Farai Chideya:
It's not just young adults in their 20s and 30s who are struggling, of course. People of all ages are dealing with stress overwhelm and the desire to lead more fulfilling lives. I talked with Julie about how her own journey growing up biracial than parenting children with the help of her mother helped her find the work she loves to do.
Farai Chideya:
Let's go back to people pleasing. People pleasing has been a tough one for me. It's come up in my family. It's come up in work. It's come up in also like being the one who buys everybody lunch. Not maybe as much when I was younger, but as I got older, I felt like, "Oh well, let me just treat everybody." And it's like, "Why don't you save for a house?" So what is people pleasing to you? How do you define it? And how does it show up as we challenge ourselves to adult?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Well, let me say, I'm not a psychologist. So anything I'm about to say comes from my lived experience and observations. I will name it for myself and not try to extrapolate my why to anyone else's. But my why behind why I am a people pleaser is, I came into this world and pretty quickly got the message that I was problematic. I'm 54 born in 1967, in the year Loving v. Virginia was handed down, right? The Supreme Court case had said, interracial marriages are not illegal anywhere and those laws are unconstitutional. I came into America and witnessed the looks on people's faces when I was young, staring at my dad with that white racist snare, not all white people. Staring at my parents when they were together, Black dad, white mom. Staring at me, what are you? What is that? I just seem like this fuzzy light skinned oddity.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And I think that my people pleasing comes from early mean, cruel, unkindness is directed toward me from teachers and strangers and friends, frankly, and classmates. And the people pleasing is my attempt or was, I've done so much work in my 40s, I'm not that person anymore. I think I'm largely rid of it, although not entirely, obviously. But certainly coming up and well into my adulthood. It was, I'm trying to not be called the N-word again. I'm trying to not incur your wrath, or your disdain, or your disregard. I am trying to show up in every moment, in every conversation, in every meeting with whatever greatness, with whatever I can do to incur your approval, as a matter of emotional safety and protection.
Farai Chideya:
Yep. No, I mean, I resemble those remarks. What I find, at least for me, is that when I go into people pleasing mode, I'm not checking my motives. And then usually my motivation somehow involves me being miss big stuff and being the magnanimous one who takes care of everyone. And then I'm burnt out. I'm like, "People are taking advantage of me." It's like, no, you threw yourself under the bus. And really part of my journey with people pleasing has been to learn that it's not actually pleasing because I end up presenting it. But what do you think the hardest lesson was for you?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
I think the hardest lesson for me for I was feedback. I share in the chapter, You're Not Perfect, that I was crushing it, I thought, as the dean of freshman, about 18 months into this job I would hold for 10 years at Stanford University when a colleague took me out for lunch and told me that some other colleagues were saying, I was a ladder climber who didn't care who she stepped on the way to the top. And look, this was another Black woman. I didn't feel that the conversation or the critique was in any way racialized, which frankly was a relief. I didn't have to add that to the mix.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And I was so ashamed, just noticing how often the word shame is coming up in our conversation, but I want to name it. I was ashamed to be the person who needed to receive that feedback.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And what she was saying was, "You're a lone Wolf. You're a lone actor." All you do it's like, I, I ,I." And frankly, my law background was about, have the right argument, make a compelling argument, convince the people, move on. In academia, it was the opposite. It was collegial, collaborative. Don't just impose your good ideas and call it a day. Go listen to people which I was not doing. And so my journey to be able to discover, "Oh, heck I am so imperfect. I need to have to be pulled aside and given this feedback." And of course it wasn't going to be the last time.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
But every single time I did allow that feedback in, and ingest it and digested and mull it over, a big shift came because I was able to then incorporate that feedback and then level up. And so, my life has taught me if you're willing to listen to the feedback and figure out what you want to incorporate, that's where the growth opportunity comes. And I think that's one of the central messages of the book is, it ain't about perfection. It's about, you're here to learn and grow until you take your last breath. So every time something doesn't go right, didn't go your way, or you outright F-ed it up, what can you learn from that? Because guess what? You're going to be stronger, more capable, more confident, more calm next time.
Farai Chideya:
And you also talk about how you ended up with the career you've ended up in. You didn't start out wanting to be an academic dean. What did you start out wanting to do? And why did you change?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
I wanted to be a lawyer. I wanted to be a public interest lawyer. I wanted to be a lawyer like Thurgood Marshall, who as many of your listeners know litigated Brown v. Board and became our nation's first Black Supreme Court justice. I'm smiling now at myself. Like, "I'm going to be a Supreme Court."
Farai Chideya:
Hey, nothing wrong. Nothing wrong.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
All hail Ketanji Brown Jackson. Yeah, exactly.
Farai Chideya:
Yes, exactly.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Right?
Farai Chideya:
Exactly.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And so I went to law school for that purpose. I'd fallen in love with law as a way to heal, and fix, and transform a society. And trouble was, as a young insecure Black woman in an elite law school environment, very much a people pleaser. I gleaned that the praise came not from public interest law jobs, but from corporate jobs. So, though I had gone to law school to help. And I was really getting into family law, like kids, kids in the system. And how can we help kids whose lives have gone awry, no fault of their own. I just abandoned all of that. And instead went in search of corporate offers and got plenty and came to a law firm here in Silicon Valley, in Palo Alto, a great law firm Cooley Godward, where I became an intellectual property litigator. And I was good at it, and mentored, and paid well. And I just felt this knot in my stomach every Sunday afternoon at two, at the thought of having to go back in because the work was not my work. I was good at it, but I did not love it.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And in that moment of misery, I realized it's not enough to be good at your work. If you don't also love it, you will feel like a drone going through the motions of your own life. And in that misery, I gave myself permission to ask myself, who are you actually? What are you good at? Plus, what do you love? And can you find work that lives at that intersection? And that's what led me toward higher education administration to try to help students make better choices than I had made at their age.
Farai Chideya:
And now you've transitioned again to being author and thought leader.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And I'm here to learn and grow. So, who knows what's next? You know what I mean? I'm trying to help humans, Farai. My thing, as is your thing I think, and many people, right? I'm here to be of use. My mother likes to say, "You're reinventing yourself." And I like to say, "No, I'm just showing up in a different way to serve the same goal." I mean, I ache at the thought of people being left behind. And I think it comes back to feeling like an outsider from the start.
Farai Chideya:
Let's just touch on your family and household. You talk about being the daughter of a woman from Yorkshire, I believe it is.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Yes.
Farai Chideya:
In the Northern UK. And I loved, in the audio book, where you had your mother read a poem. And then a Black American father. And you also did some intergenerational parenting with your mother living in the home with you and your partner. As you raised your children. And how did that shape, how you view this question of adulting?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Wow. Well, you're teeing up a future book of mine, which is not yet written. It's a concept in my head, but this intergenerational compact, which we entered into to afford the public schools in Palo Alto. So my mother decided to go in with me and Dan on a house that was really damaged, but that's her equity and ours from a different house, right? That's how we made it work. And we then have lived now for 20 years together, inter-generationally. And it has been full of the upsides anyone can imagine. Three adults in a house raising two kids, free childcare, the best childcare, loving. My mother's an educator, she's a very loving person. And yet, the dynamic between me and my mother, whether it's because she's from England and I'm from the U.S., or she's her generation, I'm mine, or her person, whatever. It was just headbutt, headbutt, headbutt, headbutt at the dining table, at the kitchen counter.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And often with my mom in the house, I felt my agency encroached upon as I was a mother, and a wife, and a human who is an adult, trying to make my own way, make my own decisions. I had a very smart, thoughtful opinionated mom, muttering, or trying to tell me what to do. And so I would really, I battled that. And I think that's probably informed some of my writing.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And she and I now have coffee every morning from eight to nine. And just recently, she said I'm not sure we would've gotten here in terms of our psychological, knowing of one another. She said, "I'm not sure we would've gotten here. If it was all up to me." She acknowledged, we wouldn't have gotten to this point of relative ease with one another. So I'm proud of her for being able to recognize that I'm proud of us both for being able to do the work. And I think that's informed some of my writing.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. Well, let's turn back to younger people and you have raised two of them into adulthood. Congratulations.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
So your first book, How to Raise an Adult came out in 2015, and then after that, we had a pandemic, racial reckonings, school shootings, insurrection. It's a lot for people of every age. And what advice do you have or how would you at least offer some thoughts on being overwhelmed. Being overwhelmed by it all?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Yeah. My own kids are 23 and soon to be 21. And I very much write in furtherance of them thriving. Of course our own kids don't necessarily read what we write. So I have to hope someone else gives them my book. But I think first and foremost, I would honor the overwhelm. Yes, you're overwhelmed. Absolutely. Let's talk about that. Let's validate that. It is real and it's valid. Number one.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Number two, yep. And now what are we going to do? Let's reframe what we can't do. The pandemic said, "You can't do this. You can't do that." All of these other systemic problems, some of which you've named, right? Tell us what we can't do or what is wrong. Let's reframe as what I can do. My theory of change is at the level of the individual. What can each of us do in ourselves, in our family units, with the strangers we interact with, and neighbors, and colleagues, and friends. To spread kindness, frankly, I think kindness is the magical elixir that if we could all drink it down and have it animate who we are for a week, we would watch the human community level up and begin to heal.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
But of course, we aren't kind to people who are different than us, particularly now. So that's why I call kindness one of our superpowers at the very end of Your Turn. It's like at the end of the day, you know what you can do to really make a difference? Kindness and gratitude and a mindfulness practice. These are your superpowers that will help yo make your life a better one and improve the lives of everyone.
Farai Chideya:
Yeah. I mean, I interviewed Dr. Elizabeth Blackburn who won the Nobel for Medicine and she does research on cellular aging and telomeres. And one of the things she found was that mindfulness practices could help reverse stress related cellular aging. She looked at people who were doing caregiving, which really can add to your stress. And I thought that was fascinating. And only now in my 50s, am I really beginning to take a mindfulness practice seriously, as a daily thing. Some people find it much younger.
Farai Chideya:
But let's talk about just the level of stress and burnout. And also the additional burden of this pandemic, the American Psychological Association's Stress in America 2022 survey found that 77%, 77%, more than three quarters, of 18 to 25 year old said that, "The COVID 19 pandemic has stolen major life moments that they will never get back." So how do you talk to someone who started their adulthood forged in the crucible of this pandemic?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
I think anytime you're talking to humans and they express an element of trauma, or of deep sadness as this generation is expressing in response to surveys. And I'm glad they're speaking up about it. I think empathy and compassion are the very first necessary response. Too often in the older generation we dismiss feelings. "Oh, it's not that bad." "Oh, get over it." "Oh, you're so sensitive." "Oh, blah, blah, blah, blah." None of that is helpful. Empathy and compassion are enormous tools. Helping a person feel they're heard when they express such anguish is key.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And then I think it's... What I try to say is quite likely our ancestors went through even worse. I'm talking to you as a seventh generation made American by my great, great, great, great grandmother Sylvie, who was a slave in Charleston, South Carolina in the late 1700s who was raped by her master.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And when I'm feeling like my life is challenging or whatnot, I just draw upon the strength that I know is in my DNA. And in my ancestral memories. I know there's pain there too, but I try to stand on their shoulders.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
And I would say that to 18 to 25 year olds, think about your ancestors, see what you can draw from the lessons of the past. I was denied some of my major life moments. What am I going to do now to really activate what I want? Because I have been deprived of doing what I wanted or having what I needed. It is my right now to really level that up. And so I think there's actually some nice permission embedded in this. Yeah, you did have stuff stolen, so what is it that you want to claim now? Don't waste your life, and I'm going to be stereotypical now, don't go get that wall street job that you think you "Should," or everybody says you ought to do. And I'm air quotes saying this. Go do the work that lights you up.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
You have had major life moments stolen, now is not the time to continue to let systems and opinions limit you. Now is the time to say, "This is my one wild and precious life" quoting the late poet, Mary Oliver."
Farai Chideya:
Oh, Mary Oliver. Yes.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Right? Go. It's yours. It is yours. It is precious. And it's wild. Go live it.
Farai Chideya:
Amen to all of that. And so my last question is, how do you give back when you feel frustrated by the world?
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Oh, well I blog weekly. It's called Julie's Pod. And I try to be very open and vulnerable about what I'm experiencing, observing about my life, my America, my town. And I'm trying to demonstrate that when we're vulnerable, we can connect really beautifully with other humans. And lately I've been, as many of us have, Farai, just feeling like giving up. Pandemic, systemic racialized violence, climate catastrophe, et cetera. And I've decided no, now is not the time for someone like me at my age and stage to give up, it's the opposite that's required. In furtherance of that, I have just decided to throw my hat in the ring to be on the ballot for city council here in Palo Alto.
Farai Chideya:
Oh wow.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
To try to love this city. I've been in fight or flight from my own city because of issues I've experienced around unbelonging as a Black person here, for example. And because of my frustration, over lack of affordable housing, I've been like, "Oh, my kids are grown. Maybe I should leave." And I've decided not to leave. I've decided to stay and fight for all of us.
Farai Chideya:
Wow. That is intense and amazing. And-
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
It's scary.
Farai Chideya:
Hopefully fruitful.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Yeah. Well, I hope to learn a thing or two along the way, regardless of what happens in November, it is a learning curve and I am here to learn and grow until I take my last breath.
Farai Chideya:
Well, Julie, I look forward to hearing more about your adventures in elected office, and as an author and thought leader. Thank you so much for joining us.
Julie Lythcott-Haims:
Thank you. Appreciate you and all the listeners for being with us.
Farai Chideya:
That was Julie Lythcott-Haims on her new book. Your Turn: How to Be an Adult.
Farai Chideya:
Coming up next, our weekly round table, Sippin' the Political Tea, revisits our coverage of the overturn of Roe v. Wade. And what's at stake for women of color. You're listening to Our Body Politic.
Farai Chideya:
Each week on the show, we bring you a round table called Sippin' the Political Tea. In the wake of the Supreme Court's Dobbs decision. Both supporters and opponents of abortion rights have focused on state laws and access. On the federal level, President Biden signed an executive order aimed at protecting doctors who perform abortions to protect the lives of pregnant patients in states with new laws restricting abortion. In may, when the draft of the Dobbs opinion was leaked. We spoke with our legal contributor, Tiffany Jeffers, Georgetown law professor, and Michele Goodwin chancellor's professor at UC Irvine and author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. It's a great moment to revisit the mix of academic wisdom and lived experience, which these scholars bring to this key issue at this moment.
Farai Chideya:
Welcome professor Goodwin.
Michele Goodwin:
Thank you so much for inviting me to your show.
Farai Chideya:
Hi Tiffany.
Tiffany Jeffers:
Hi Farai.
Farai Chideya:
I want to start out before we dive in here, to take a minute to acknowledge the deep spiritual, physical, and economic pain that so many people are in right now. We're going to talk today about abortion access rooted in the lived experience of Black girls and women, and it's going to be heavy. And, I feel like what we do on this show is that we carry the weight. We acknowledge the weight. We share the load. And we drop it when we can. And we keep on keeping on. So thank you both for joining us.
Farai Chideya:
And on that level, Michele, I want to thank you personally for being brilliant, brave, vulnerable, not quite six months ago, you wrote an opinion piece for the New York Times. It's called. I Was Raped by My Father and Abortion Saved My Life. And every word is a must read. You're so clear. What made you write this?
Michele Goodwin:
Right now, the United States Supreme Court is considering a case from Mississippi. And it's a case that involves a 15 week abortion ban. It makes no exceptions for cases of rape or incest. These are aspects now of law that we wouldn't have even seen five years ago. Now to be clear, the Mississippi abortion ban has not gone into effect yet. I wrote this piece because it was a piece that needed to be articulated. Recently, there's been a leaked draft opinion from the United States Supreme Court that signals the dismantling all together of Roe v. Wade. There has been a historic arc in this country that has never given any compassionate deliberation to the lives of Black women. And now to see the specter of what is happening and the failure to engage with, what at the bottom line lies behind these laws, there was the need to articulate. And because I have personal experience in this domain, I could speak directly to what that pain happened to look like, what that torture happens to be.
Farai Chideya:
Thank you so much for being willing to give us more perspective on your life's work as an academic and also lived experience. And both of you are legal scholars who are deeply embedded in the lived experience of being American, not just being Black or female, but being American.
Farai Chideya:
Tiffany, in some of my other previous reporting, I interviewed a woman who was forced to be a child bride in a white supremacist cult. And this is not the most common experience in the world, but sexual coercion of young women of all races happens in different ways and different reasons. My neighbor, as I was growing up, who has passed on since was forced to marry her rapist, she was an elderly Black woman by the time. I knew her as a child. And she was forced to marry her rapist. How do you as a former prosecutor who has dealt with sex crimes, juvenile justice, many different things, and now a legal scholar, look at the playing field of what's happening with abortion access and abortion law against the backdrop of the lived experience of America, including race and gender?
Tiffany Jeffers:
So sexual victimization is so intersectional because it's psychological, it's physical and it's emotional. And when you see young girls that have been victimized sexually, there are some instances where their abuser has done such a psychological transformation on them that they don't see themselves as victims. And that's the scary and dangerous part of victimizing young children, young girls, is because then they become a party in their own victimization and their own assault. So that's been a difficult part in working with victims is helping them realize that number one, they're not to blame. Number two, this was actually wrong.
Farai Chideya:
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Tiffany Jeffers:
Some people don't see this as a crime because it's just been the way it is for so long. Black girls not being in possession of their own bodily autonomy for centuries in this country. And that even as we've navigated civil rights, that hasn't necessarily translated to bodily autonomy for young Black girls in significant, meaningful ways. And so if we can help stop victimization before it starts, I think that's going to make a bigger difference than solely working on helping victims recover after they've been psychologically and physically terrorized in this way.
Farai Chideya:
In the draft Justice Samuel Alito wrote, "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start. Its reasoning was exceptionally weak and the decision has had damaging consequences. And far from bringing about a national settlement of the abortion issue, Roe and Casey have inflamed debate and deepened division."
Farai Chideya:
Michele, starting with you. How did you process this opinion?
Michele Goodwin:
Well, first there's been much writing about the fact that there was a leak. And that is highly unusual. And so that is a story, but it's not the story. The story is actually this draft opinion and what it contains. And this draft opinion has numerous errors and omissions, and engages in the outcome determinative cherry picking that is discouraged even amongst law students. You have to deal with the full body of law. Now you can argue against legal precedents, but you can't pretend they don't exist. And I think it's important that your audience understand that textualism and originalism is a contemporary feature.
Michele Goodwin:
Let's start with the fact that in the opinion, Justice Alito refers to fetuses. He refers to unborn child. But here's, what's interesting, is that the constitution makes no reference to fetuses, embryos or unborn children, none. And in fact, what the constitution does say in the very first sentence of the 14th Amendment,, is that citizens of this country are people who are born. Now that level of omission is absolutely glaring. The fact that he would reference the 14th Amendment, but not its most crucial first sentence given this opinion, says so much.
Farai Chideya:
You're listening to Sippin' the Political Tea on Our Body Politic. I am Farai Chideya. This week, we are diving deep into questions about abortion and the law and lived experience with Michele Goodwin, the chancellor's professor at the University of California Irvine and host of the podcast, On The Issues With Michele Goodwin.
Farai Chideya:
We've also got Tiffany Jeffers, the Our Body Politic legal contributor, associate professor of law at Georgetown University.
Farai Chideya:
First of all, if we were constitutional originalists, there would be no women voting, no women in elected office, and no female Supreme Court justices. So let's start with that originalism. And on top of that, from what I understand, the framework around childbirth in the founding of the country was around the British framework of life beginning at the quickening, about 18 weeks, about when one might feel a baby move. And so the framework of life beginning at conception is not something that I believe the originalist were familiar with.
Michele Goodwin:
Let's be clear as well, the originalist did not have sonograms, right? So this whole idea about here's what they perceived is just absolutely inaccurate. As they say, the pilgrims were performing abortions, the indigenous people, on whose lands we are recording practice, all manner of birth control, abortion, caring pregnancies to term, all of that.
Farai Chideya:
And turning to you, Tiffany, still sticking with Justice Samuel Alito writing, "Roe was egregiously wrong from the start." What sticks out to you about the draft?
Tiffany Jeffers:
What sticks out to me is the historical dishonesty in the opinion, the poor reasoning, the logical leaps and liberties that are taken, the analytical flaws in reasoning, but also Justice Alito's efforts to go overboard in ensuring that no other privacy rights are in danger, which I think is also dishonest based on the way he wrote this opinion, framing it around explicit rights, originalism and textualism within the constitution. But then to say that no other non-explicit rights are in danger, so people shouldn't be alarmed. And to frame that as hysteria within the opinion is a form of gas lighting and intellectual bullying.
Farai Chideya:
And Michele, obviously you are author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. Tell me a little bit more about how the scope of your work relates to this question of what rights women have when women are birthing parents.
Michele Goodwin:
The story that we know is that this is a country that's been satiated on, and at different points, addicted to the pain and suffering of Black women. And when it's no longer been satiated by or fed by that terrorism on Black women's bodies, then it's just been so deeply normalized, that's just simply the norm. Tolerating the way in which politicians regard and describe Black women as historically crack moms, welfare queens, all these various kinds of things. These denigrating ways of capturing, quite inaccurately, who Black women are as mothers. But in the book, what I do, is I unpack that, but also what's been happening to poor white women across the country.
Farai Chideya:
There's an argument that's being made on the right, that abortions are detrimental to the Black population. For example, you've got T. W. Shannon who's a Senate candidate in Oklahoma, a Black man who wrote in a Fox News op-ed that, "The same race hustling, mostly rich and white Democrat politicians. Who've been telling Black Americans for 50 years that all conservatives hate them, proudly support an organization that is single handedly responsible for the deaths of more Black people than the Ku Klux Klan." And that organization, in his writing, is Planned Parenthood. What do you make of that argument, Michele?
Michele Goodwin:
There's been histories of flat out misrepresentation and lying to paper over the injustices that have been experienced and inflicted on Black people. It's absolutely undeniable that Black women were reproductive chattel in this country, relegated to the status of property. Not allowed the status to even be parent to their own children. That is the history. It's referenced to Planned Parenthood as being responsible for and starting up as a means of destroying Black communities is absolutely inaccurate. And actually at the end of the day, these are about their efforts to win campaigns. And to get people to vote for them.
Farai Chideya:
Well, let me bring you in Tiffany. As Michele has been talking, I've been thinking about a couple of different things. One, are the stats on Black women having the highest rates of abortions. Also, three times more likely to die of pregnancy related causes than white women.
Farai Chideya:
I'm also thinking about your work as a prosecutor in dealing with juvenile justice. And I can't help but think, how often Black women are blamed for Black children's deeds. And as someone who's had a very expansive life, I am well traveled enough and well networked enough to know how race and money affect the prospects of children. And who gets treatment for mental health issues. Who gets quietly disciplined after being violent, and who goes to jail for it. So I view it all as a spectrum of how Black women and all women may be blamed for having children that they didn't want to have, and don't have the resources to raise. How do you make sense of that picture? Particularly, as it affects Black and BIPOC women?
Tiffany Jeffers:
The time I spent in the juvenile division, all of the juvenile cases came to the same courtroom. There was no separation of family cases and criminal cases. The delinquency and the family court was just one courtroom. So oftentimes, even if I wasn't trying a case or working through a deal, I'd sit in the courtroom and see what was happening with parental rights.
Tiffany Jeffers:
Oftentimes in Baltimore, where I practiced, I think it's probably close to 65% of the family law cases that came through the juvenile system were Black families. And to see the way that the court had to navigate parental rights because of poverty and addiction issues. And it wasn't limited to the Black moms, the blame of mothers because of the circumstances, the health crises that they found themselves in with relation to addiction issues was really overwhelming.
Tiffany Jeffers:
Oftentimes there was no father present in the room and when there was, he struggled with his own mental health, substance abuse issues, poverty issues, health crisis, health challenges. And so it was a really sad experience to witness. The lack of agency that those mothers found themselves in, and the desperation that the children faced was devastating to watch.
Tiffany Jeffers:
And I think when this opinion comes out, even if the language is changed, what it's going to do to abortion access is going to just exacerbate these problems that are happening in local courthouses all across this country.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks, Tiffany. And what I want to end with is the national landscape, again, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll, the majority of voters, 53%, say Roe v. Wade should not be overturned. 28% say it should be. And on Wednesday, the Senate blocked legislation writing abortion into federal law. So Tiffany, what are your final thoughts here?
Tiffany Jeffers:
My final thoughts Farai are, I would say based in more hope than desperation. Because we've experienced the right, and we're not starting from ground zero, we're not starting from scratch where we're fighting for the unknown. For 50 years in this country, women had the autonomy to control their decision of what happened to their body. And I think that having tasted those rights when they're taken away, it's going to be a bitter fight to regain them. But I think we'll be successful. I'm hopeful. I put hope in the people, because that's who's going to fight. It's going to be us. And so, that's what I'm holding onto these days.
Farai Chideya:
And Michele, your final thoughts.
Michele Goodwin:
Yes. I'd agree with you Tiffany. And that is we must not lose hope and we must not surrender our joy. And I think there's a lot to be learned from the victories that communities have had, Black communities, communities of color, farm worker communities who've prevailed over time. And I think that we're going to be in a time where we have the opportunity to get it right better than we have even before.
Farai Chideya:
Thank you so much, Michele.
Michele Goodwin:
Thank you.
Farai Chideya:
And thank you, Tiffany.
Tiffany Jeffers:
Thank you, Farai.
Farai Chideya:
That was Tiffany Jeffers, associate professor of law at Georgetown University and Our Body Politic contributor. And Michele Goodwin, chancellor's professor at the University of California Irvine, an author of Policing the Womb: Invisible Women and the Criminalization of Motherhood. She's also the host of the podcast On The Issues With Michele Goodwin.
Farai Chideya:
Thanks for listening to Our Body Politic. We're on the air each week -- and everywhere you listen to podcasts. Our Body Politic is produced by Diaspora Farms. I'm the executive producer and host, Farai Chideya.
Farai Chideya:
Bianca Martin is our senior producer. Bridget McAllister and Traci Caldwell are our booking producers. Emily J. Daly, Steve Lack, and Teresa Carey are our producers. Natyna Bean and Emily Ho are our associate producers.
Farai Chideya:
Production and editing services are by Clean Cuts at Three Seas. Today's episode was produced with the help of Lauren Schild and engineered by Archie Moore.
This program is produced with support from the Ford Foundation, Craig Newmark Philanthropies, the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Philanthropies, Democracy Fund, The Harnisch Foundation, Compton Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the BMe Community, Katie McGrath & JJ Abrams Family Foundation, and from generous contributions from listeners like you.