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Good Inside with Dr. Becky Podcast
Resentment, Joy, and Why Moms Don't Believe They're Allowed Either

Resentment, Joy, and Why Moms Don't Believe They're Allowed Either

Good Inside with Dr. Becky vor 1 Monat

Most nights you replay the day and ask yourself one question: was my kid happy? Kate Bowler thinks that's the wrong question, and the right one might change how your whole day feels.

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37:11

Was today a good day? Did my kid seem happy? If the answer is no,
even a little, it can feel like the whole day failed, like you
failed.

Dr. Becky sits down with Kate Bowler, a professor at Duke
University, to make the case that happiness might be the wrong
thing to optimize for in the first place. Happiness, Kate argues,
is really just ease: a hundred small circumstances lining up so
nothing feels hard. Which means chasing it for your kids can
quietly turn you into what Kate calls a professional happiness
manager, smoothing every rough edge before it reaches them.

Joy is different. It doesn't need conditions to line up. It shows
up in weird obsessions, a dumb dance in the kitchen, a dry pasta
fight, a moment at the worst point in Kate's own life (she spent
years navigating a serious cancer diagnosis) when something good
found her anyway. Kate and Becky talk through what kids already
understand about joy that adults forget, why so many moms don't
believe joy is even available to them, and a practical exercise
Kate uses to name the resentments that quietly block it.

Read A Blessing for Parents Who Are Trying, adapted from Kate
Bowler’s latest book, Joyful, Anyway.

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