$$$ Mark is my friend from 7th grade, and he is here to talk parenting. He's a dad to a young daughter. I'm single and have a psychology degree. 

$$$ Ive been studying developmental psychology lately, like all last semester, when I had this class on it in graduate school. It's cool stuff. IT IS LIFE. LIFE HANDBOOK CONTAINED WITHIN. Not really, I don't give explicit advice, but people generally have a feel for what happens, so they write books and what not about it. Today, we discuss this sort of thing. Information is readily available. 

$$$ Today's mission is to compare psychology texts with popular parenting books. Are we all on the same page here, or not at all? That seems like it matters.

$$$ We dink around for about three and half minutes, and then get into it. I ferociously defend games, as is tradition. 

$$$ I mean to say "I've never been pregnant, and never been *WITH* someone who was pregnant."

$$$ Mark has read Emily Oster's books Expecting Better and Crib Sheet

$$$ I have my textbooks: The Life Span - Human Development for Helping Professionals, and also: Psychology. Literally the title. Psych 101. Absolute basics. Aka what people think and already know for the most part. 

$$$ We immediately attack the process of science itself, because life is an endless flood of contradictions. Before long, I am getting stuck on Actual Integration. I have some pet ideas. 

$$$ IMPORTANT CORRECTION: I have the paper-publishing bit totally wrong. Everyone publishes papers who is a PhD candidate, but only about 1% of them get CITED. As in used by another graduate student or professor in their work. 

$$$ I illuminate the repetitiveness and shallowness of my psychology education. I am eternally annoyed by this and am now taking action. I believe all these programs can be elevated by holding every class to the standard of the best classes. There are great classes half the time, then half the time, it's a fraudulent waste of four months. It's offensive when the effort level stoops to truly pathetic, which happens about a quarter of the time in my experience. Some monitoring and upholding of an already existing standard (actually lecture with expertise! actually give productive assignments! actually know the field! people do this! it isn't rocket science!) would snap everything into place and create a legion of better therapists and psychologists. And people in general. I wonder if this applies to other fields. 


$$$ Psychology is a feminized field. It started as a male-dominated field, as it was introduced by male physicians. It is different now. I run headfirst into stereotypes, cause I am here to talk about the words. This conversation is about language quite a bit. I don't mind saying things. This isn't a criticism - stay tuned for the statistics on this. It be how it do, ok?

$$$ We find a good example of unnecessary gendering causing a problem. 

$$$ We do talk about current events, and things get real podcasty for a while. We're like "yeah! I saw that - and get this - I have something to say about it" but it's fine. RACE, PRIVILEGE and PATRIARCHY are touched on for all you political types out there.

$$$ Michelle Penelope King is another author recommended by Mark.

$$$ We actually give some advice, whoops: it seems good to educate yourself about the positions on the other side of the political spectrum, especially if you identify very solidly with where you are. Good beliefs withstand challenges, and being aware of the totality of the political conversation is kinda nice. It's like ok, that's all the ideas, now I see why everything is eternally crazy. I'm going to lie down for a half an hour and then cook and eat a steak. 

$$$ We eventually get into the topic at hand.


$$$ We go on.

$$$ We discuss a few other things along the way.