ASM221 Chronotypes, Inclusion in Science, and Teaching Children About Sexuality

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chronotypes inclusion in science and teaching children about sexuality all that and more on this week's episode of ask he'll sciencemic anyway he got problems he won't stop there but he'll talk and talk until he flew in the face science faith well don't adjust your television sets this podcast is now a video oh man this is wild if you're listening as normal an apple podcast or switcher or google podcast or a podcast platform this episode should sound basically normal but if you're watching this video on instagram tv or youtube or facebook you've realized that i'm trying something new and that's a video edition of ask science mike wow this is wild this is new i was talking with victory and tanner two of the people who helped me out on uh well everything i do but that includes uh ask science mike and tanner thought it would be cool to try a video version of the podcast so i'm literally just trying it on my own uh eventually if this works we'll probably try it with actual production support but today i'm the one operating the the audio equipment the video equipment the switcher that does all the graphics on the screen so if you see me looking down that's because i'm trying to literally operate the video portion of the podcast i think it's going to sound basically normal to listeners gosh whatever i'm getting ahead of myself if this is your first time watching ask science mike uh i am mike mccarth as you can see from this really fancy graphic i just put on the screen i'm also known as science mike i'm the host of ask science mike and this is a weekly podcast where we believe that every sincere question deserves an honest and non-judgmental response that's the point of this program to reward curiosity there are so many topics and questions we have in our lives that for one reason or another we often just don't feel safe asking other people this show started with me asking questions that weren't allowed in my religious upbringing and my religious adulthood but as i began to respond to questions in an honest and non-judgmental way i found that people from all kinds of backgrounds and in all kinds of communities have questions they don't feel safe asking those in their lives questions not only about sex and sexuality or the fundamentals of science but also about equality inclusion justice all kinds of issues people have questions and this is a place where i'll respond to you honestly as a non-expert i'm just a guy who likes to read a lot who's had a difficult life and a lot of suffering and for some reason thousands of people every week tune into this podcast and i think it's because i just really like all of you and i think it's okay if people have questions and people have curiosity and if sometimes those questions uh scrape up against taboos or sometimes because of our backgrounds people have learned things at different rates and what's obvious to someone else is new to you and as someone who's learned a lot of things later in life it is my joy to welcome people into new knowledge and new understanding and this is such an amazing and important time in my life right now because we are moving towards the launch of something i am so excited about and that's this book it's called you're a miracle and a pain in the ass and uh there's so much happening right now in relation to this book number one again it comes out april 28th it's an exploration of why we think and do and feel things in a different way than we want to think and do and feel why is it we feel anxiety when we don't like to be anxious why is it that when we know we need a good night's sleep we just keep watching netflix why is it that when we know often that we are struggling with health challenges and health obstacles that we continue to eat foods that aren't good for us why is it that we have panic attacks and anxiety and and all these things that's what the book is about and i'll be honest it's really hard to launch a book in the face of a global pandemic so i'm so proud of every no on my events team and at my publisher and at the independent bookstores that are partnering with me that we are still proceeding towards this launch and actually that is something i'd love to tell you about i am going on a tour all over the country yeah that's right i'm going on tour in the middle of a pandemic but not quite a normal tour the point of this tour is to do something that is safe and happens in your home so this is a way that we can be together when we're not all able to be together and the tour is going to happen in your home and it will happen on uh in a lot of cities uh april 27 will be in atlanta georgia april 28th nashville tennessee april 28 minneapolis april 30th seattle may 1st portland uh then we'll go from there may 5th to dallas may 6 austin may 8th los angeles may 9th houston texas may 12 washington dc may 13th new york new york may 16 chicago may 19th charlotte may 21st san francisco may 22nd denver may 26th philadelphia may 28th detroit may 30th grand rapids uh and then after that in june june 2nd boston uh june 4th orlando back in my home state of florida and june 5th raleigh north carolina and i am just absolutely thrilled to go on the road and see you all again without leaving my house without violating social distancing order and we've come up with some really great things here you're going to get a copy of the book with your ticket you're going to get a personalized item from me either a book plate or a postcard that i'm going to hand write to you and inscribe to you personally i'm so excited to do all of this to get more information about that and about the book itself and about pre-order bonuses that i don't even have time to talk to talk about this week this is a major week for the book as we move towards launch i'd like to invite you to go to asksciencemike.com new book i'll say that you are again ask sciencemike.com new book and there you can learn all about where you can buy the book how you can be a part of the tour tickets are on sale today and by the way there are unlimited free scholarship tickets at every stop because i know people are facing economic uncertainty right now so i'm really really happy that we're able to do that and able to offer that and then you can also learn about pre-order bonuses how you can start reading the book today even before it comes out by getting a copy of the first three chapters as a pdf as well as be a part of the official book club that i'm leading so if you want to read the book alongside me i've got an official book book club and all that information is available again asksciencemike.com slash new book did you just see how fancy that was viewers that we cut to the jingle oh man this is like a high wire act that you wouldn't believe uh what do you say uh let's start doing some questions and our first question this week is an email question and it reads hi mike what do we understand about night owls versus early birds how real is the idea that we're inclined to one or the other how much is it habit and how much is biology and how good or bad is it for us to go against our inclinations for long periods of time my husband of three months exactly as i write this and i are working on navigating very different sleep orientations giving especially given he is an early bird and is anxious by my night owl late sleep schedule i need to work on my sleep habits in many ways but it would be good to have some scientific guidance to help set both of our expectations thanks for everything you do and are i'm grateful for the ways your presence has brought me and many others calm grace and joy oh my goodness well thank you first of all for such a wonderful thoughtful and kind comment at the end of a great question and this is a question that many people face this whole circadian rhythm thing and it is true we definitely have different biological orientations or biases toward different sleep patterns and this is really important those patterns change over the periods of our lives we aren't necessarily fixed in one or the other children tend to be more naturally larks morning risers young children and then in our teenage years most people ship shift toward a night owl rhythm naturally then in adulthood we start to find out kind of our intrinsic pattern for a time for most of adulthood will be one of several different chronotypes is the word we're looking for here a type of circadian rhythm response and then as we move into senior adulthood many people find themselves becoming more naturally larks again as uh senior adults need less sleep than other age groups excuse me gosh i got the allergies today real bad so does that have a basis in biology absolutely it is not just habit and conditioning i am a natural lark i feel most alert early in the mornings i get very sleepy when the sun goes down and i want to wake up when the sun comes up and my wife is a night owls night owl i think she finally starts to feel awake and alert about 9pm and given uh her own choice she would stay up until the wee hours of the morning and then sleep until noon and therein lies the problem one of these isn't better or worse but we've definitely oriented society around a daytime schedule and it is more harmful for you to get less sleep than you need than to shift your chronotype so um when you talk about sleep habits or sleep hygiene this is very very important and something that people tend to be pretty bad at but we really need at least six hours of sleep at night most people are gonna need seven and a half to eight and a half hours of sleep a night some people and in different situations need even more than that sometimes i'm a ten hour a night guy where i will need to sleep nine or ten hours to feel refreshed it's probably related to the fact that i have narcolepsy and so we see absolutely there are different chronotypes and prototypes living together can be challenging in relationships as you've discovered i'll have a link in the show notes right below wherever you're watching or listening to an article in psychology today called are you a morning like or a night owl now there are more than two chronotypes but i think this simplification is okay for our purposes in this conversation and we have found that believe it or not the most satisfying relationships tend to be among people who share a chronotype with one particular point of emphasis most people we find sexual activity correlates with relationship sex satisfaction pretty well there are exceptions not everybody uh asexual people in particular don't have a great association with sexual activity and relationship satisfaction but for many people the two things are correlated and predictive of each other and we have found that men women who are larks and night owls typically prefer to have sex before they go to sleep while men who are night owls like to have sex before they go to sleep but men who are larks like to have sex when they wake up and this kind of gap in when we'd like to have sex and when we'd like to have physical intimacy can cause tension in relationships that is a real thing that has been documented and studied there are other complications as well my wife likes to have quality time in the evenings nothing makes her happier than for me to stay up and watch a show with her maybe until 11 pm and that is extremely difficult for me to do i will usually fall asleep in my chair and uh then you know a state of of at least mild disappointment she'll say ah just go to bed gosh you're snoring so um this is something that we have to work on in relationships and there has to be a give and take of i when i wake up very early in the morning and sometimes i will wake up it gosh 4 45 or 5 a.m and then i try to tiptoe quietly out of the room because that is an inhumane hour for me to wake up my night owl wife uh and she's gotten pretty understanding that when it's 9 45 and i just can't go anymore she understands that i need to go to bed and with those kind of different approaches to sleep and wakefulness we often have to be very intentional about the times of day where we seek out each other's attention time and support it's easier for me to do a mid-morning coffee date uh than you know quality time watching a movie in the evening and that's usually something she can tolerate as well same thing kind of a mid-afternoon thing can often be worked out for quality time of course in the middle of a pandemic and code at 19 i think intimacy is challenging for anyone who has kids at home and we're no exception there uh but you know we do our best and that often means trying to figure out times in the earlier evening when we can be together this is all uh very real stuff um and it'll just require patience for two chronotypes to live together it's not impossible though by the way my wife and i've been married almost 20 years and we've managed to make it work even though i am a lark and she is a night owl okay our next question today uh also is from email and it reads kia ora hello science mike i love the show and i've learned so much from so many episodes what i would like to know is how we can encourage indigenous viewpoints and ideas in geoscience when it is one of the least diverse sciences around how can we apply indigenous understandings of the world with a predominantly white science especially around climate change which i believe is an area where those of european extraction can learn a lot from indigenous people thanks for the great work you do kia kaha be strong michael from auckland new zealand and i'd like to apologize if i absolutely murdered those pronunciations oh and by the way michael included a link to an article in the new york times called earth science has a whiteness problem which will also be in the notes below this video or in the notes in the podcast player that you are listening in right now and there is no question that whiteness in the sciences is a massive problem absolutely massive to say geoscience is one of the least diverse sciences is an incredible accomplishment because none of the sciences have inclusion or diversity respective of the populations which they represent this is an incredible travesty worldwide especially in western countries and colonized countries we have a real problem with representation in the sciences and there are no easy solutions here because this is incredibly complicated in multi-variant problem it requires a certain amount of educational access recreational access and other resources for someone to have a high propensity to become a scientist we understand that science for many reasons becomes a field dominated by white men we understand that grade school age children excel at science and math and sometime around middle school social pressures begin to apply to girls who show an appreciation for math and science there is no culture that supports or facilitates gifted young girls of any color to continue appreciating science and math as they grow this is a big problem it's a cultural problem but then we think about the kinds of activities that often inspire children to become scientists lots of time outdoors observing nature or the or the natural world access to reading materials and the time to actually spend in reading and research as children and as middle schoolers and as high schoolers we find pretty quickly that all of these things have economic access barriers so we have a structural problem the way in which economic resources are wildly racially segregated in our societies especially in the united states creates a pipeline problem where fewer children of color have the opportunity and the interest to pursue a field a career in science because they have been systematically excluded from the economic and educational resources that lead to that kind of a career path it's a structural problem which means to solve it we have got to fix the structural issues economic inequality universal in our society is the primary root of the problem of whiteness in science if you fix that problem in a generation we won't see the same same issues around inclusion in the meantime that means we need to do everything we can in affirmative action i know affirmative action for some reason becomes like this terrifying notion for many people especially white people i get it i understand that those feelings exist but when you look at the data there is no question that we simply as a society have given more money to white people therefore our children are more likely to pursue university education and education because they have the resources to do so and they've been trained from childhood to participate and move in systems in ways that make their test scores higher and their applications more compelling to largely white review boards white culture becomes the dominant framework for communicating and excelling in universities in the academy and research institutions and companies that fund scientific research it's an absolutely structural problem which means we've got to tip our finger on the scale and create a balance intentionally by paying attention to how many people of color are in our phd programs and our undergraduate programs and our research programs and our private companies doing research and we have to intentionally hire people to close that gap and once we hire them we have to listen to them about the ways in which we can collaborate in doing scientific work including within geoscience there is no easy answer to this because this is a problem that stems from the fundamental white supremacy at the heart of western cultures now let me be honest for a moment i've grown very frustrated because when i talk about issues of race and racism and white supremacy i've noticed that my friends in the united kingdom in canada and australia and new zealand and western european countries say oh gosh science mike why are you talking so much about racism that's an american problem no friends that is not an american problem just because your countries have less of a problem with white supremacy and race does not mean you don't have a problem with white supremacy and race doing better than the united states on matters of white supremacy is simply no accomplishment at all you cannot pat yourself on the back for saying yay we're better than the u.s the u.s was founded on the genocide of native people and the exploitation of africans in the slave trade that is how the united states came to be the wealthy powerful nation that it is by stealing land and stealing labor so yeah okay congratulations you're doing a better job than the u.s that does not mean you are doing a good job what we are seeing in every western country is a rise of white nationalism right now every country is struggling with this including france germany the united kingdom the netherlands a universal problem it means we've got to start confronting white supremacy in our lives and in our systems as quickly as possible in as many ways as problem as possible because as you michael so brilliantly alluded to in your question the white approach to science and to world economies is killing us all climate change is an incredible problem it turns out radical inequality is not a good way to structure a society it isn't sustainable at a fundamental level and i agree we have so much to learn from indigenous scientists and scientists of color and that begins with robust well-funded and government-mandated affirmative action programs and tearing down economic access barriers in our entire society so that more children of color and more indigenous children pursue a career in the sciences good morning science mike uh this is donnie a long time listener first time caller i have the same a similar story to probably many of the your listeners and that i was an evangelical christian um even a pastor for many years and have since deconstructed a lot of that one of the things that i have deconstructed along that path is some of the things of purity culture that were passed on to me i now have four kids two girls and two boys um my oldest girl is only eight but i'm starting to think about things like um sleepovers and um and certain things that are uh difficult topics to um to come up and how we start talking about um sexuality and keeping her safe and modesty and all those kinds of things and trying to balance that idea of not propagating anything that has to do with rape culture or purity culture but also trying to help her be safe and help her learn good strategies you know obviously one of my worst fears is having anything abuse wise happen to my daughter and i would hate for anything like that to happen so i want to keep her safe but i also don't want to have any shame associated with herself or that she would be the cause of any of those kinds of things um so how do i approach that topic how do i talk about um sexuality and sex with her how do i talk about modesty how do i talk about even things as as complicated as masturbation that was something that i was it was absolutely taboo as i was growing up um and obviously lots of shame cycles and things that went along with that and i would hate to pass that on to them but i also don't know what the right way to talk about that is um and some of those kind of things i'd love for you to point to any resources or anything that you have um learned or gleaned as you have gone ahead um in this process as your your your daughters are older than mine and uh would love to learn anything you have to share on that topic even to the extent of um i don't necessarily in my heart still agree that saving yourself for marriage quote unquote is the only way and yet it's what i did and i'm very happy with my decision um just not happy with how that decision was given to me um and i'm just not sure how to approach that topic with her because i obviously don't want her to give that away willy-nilly but i also uh want to give her freedom and reduce the shame uh that's in that cycle uh i think those are my questions um thanks very much for your time you are a huge i think i cut off the audio there i am so sorry this is a live uh i don't know how to edit when i do this so uh we'll just have to go on i think you could see uh the end of the question there in text um i made some notes while i listened to your question and um the first thing i want to say is it's good for you good for you good for you for wanting to confront rape culture and patriarchy and the kind of puritanical sexuality that so many of us in the united states and around the world grew up in because we know that it's destructive to human flourishing we know that boys and girls and people of all gender identity suffer under these sexual assumptions and these shame-based approaches to sexuality we know that they're linked with all kinds of social ills not just sexual harassment and sexual assault which are horrible in and of themselves but also unwanted pregnancies and teen pregnancies and the transmission of sexually transmitted infections things that we all universally agree on that are problematic and difficult and cause people pain seem to be intensified by shame-based approaches to discussions around sex and sexual culture and so i'm just i just want to start by saying i'm just so proud of you for thinking through this and being curious and being brave enough to ask questions about something that is difficult for so many of us to talk about this is a process that i've been going through for some time now i started to examine and question the patriarchal shame-based assumptions of evangelical christianity oh gosh about 11 years ago so i've been uh i've been on this road for a while um my daughter was very young my oldest daughter was very young when i first started to contemplate and think about these things it was before my second daughter was born and one of the best things that happened to me and how i understand sex and sexuality was losing my faith for a while because as i jettisoned a lot of theological baggage i was able to take a fresh look at sex and sexuality and the data around that and the good scholarship around that i'd say first of all that we have tremendous allies in feminists feminists and womanists have been thinking about and writing about and studying sexuality for decades and decades and their perspectives are useful and necessary for people including and perhaps especially men trying to understand sexual norms and cultures in our society so i would say pick up a good feminist book there's many many many writings of feminists uh out there on sexuality um i won't even tell you where to begin you can find many reading lists online and and that process is essential because something you've got to do as a dad is confront the patriarchy in your own sexuality and your own approach to parenting i hear in your question some familiar themes from when i started to question the ways that we approach sex and sexuality and relationships between people of different genders or for that matter sexual relationships of people of the same gender and um you've got to start unpacking those assumptions for you to talk to your children well about sex and sexuality you've got to start to have a positive relationship with yourself about sex and sexuality i've heard that you've been confronting your shame continue to do that continue to work with a therapist or mental health professional on that journey it is difficult here's a couple of points on that note not just for you but for everyone who would be listening right now our children including our daughters do not belong to us as parents children don't belong to parents we have a lot of expectation in our society and in our culture that children basically have to behave as with absolute subservience to adults especially to their parents this is a foundation of rape culture how does someone understand that they have control over their body when that is not modeled in their own home our children do not belong to us our job is not to control our children which is a fool's errand which will frustrate us and our children our job is to train children how to take responsibility for their own agency that is our job and that means setting boundaries especially when children are young and they can't hold their own boundaries so we help establish boundaries for them and then over time taking an increasingly less active stance in holding and maintaining those boundaries i've noticed two approaches that we often have as parents one is to be punitive and controlling and our children seem to behave well when they're young and then things come apart when they're teenagers and young adults or parents tend to be supportive but wildly permissive and their children don't learn the boundaries that not only make them able to function in society but actually be happy with themselves research is very clear that what makes the happiest and healthiest children is clear boundaries and expectations from parents that are combined with emotional support you need both of those things in your relationship with your children and to talk about sex and sexuality well you just need a good relationship with your kids and that means setting boundaries and expectations and providing emotional support the traditional ways of parenting in the united states in canada and in most western countries has been to either have expectations and boundaries or be emotionally supportive or neither and what we're learning from research is the best approach is to offer both expectations and boundaries and emotional support for our children and that means you're going to try to establish a relationship based on trust with your children and that means you're going to have a non-judgmental and non-reactive communication style when i'm talking to my children about anything i'm careful to talk about them talk with them about any topic in a way that's non-judgmental and non-reactive just like it is on this podcast my children know every question is not only okay or allowed but encouraged and cherished i talked to both of my daughters about sex and sexuality starting when they were very young and it's because number one there's nothing wrong with talking about sex and sexuality it's not an inappropriate topic for children children should understand that their bodies are wonderful normal things we know it's very clear even infants experience sensations associated with general genital stimulation we know that infants and toddlers start to stimulate their own genitals at a very young age and our reactions to those early explorations can set the tone for how children relate to their bodies so when my children were very young and they would begin to explore their bodies we would simply encourage them to move to a more private setting to say that that kind of special time with yourself is something that you just do when you're on your own but we didn't set any shame about it we've always been careful to not use special code words for parts of the human body i think part of the problem where we get shame based approaches to sexuality is when we have to nickname the parts of our body there's nothing wrong with the word penis or testicle or nipple or vulva or vagina or clitoris or labia when we speak about these terms plainly when children are young we teach them that there's no shame in their bodies we also teach children about their bodies and their right to their bodies and the importance of consent it means every person has a right to decide when they may be touched where they may be touched and by whom they may be touched i'm so grieved when i see parents telling children that they have to hug an adult who has started to pout because the children is not in the mood to be touched when we do that we train people to be victims of sexual assault and we train people to be victims of molestation when children understand that no one gets to decide when they are touched but them then they feel the empowerment and the agency to stand up for themselves and they become less likely to be victims of coercion and sexual assault this is very important this is very vital and as we teach children these things we teach them the opposite as well in that children including boys need to understand that they may not touch others if the other person hasn't consented and invited that contact you see what i mean when we take a daughter's only approach to sexual safety we ignore a huge part of the problem in molestation and sexual assault boys girls people of all gender identities need to know only you get to decide who touches you where and how and you have no right to touch another person without their permission now as my daughters have grown my girls are teenagers now as you've alluded to here's something that's very important to me my daughters decide when and who they will date and when and who they will have sex with that is not my decision i'll say that again my daughters decide when and who they will date and when and who they will have sex with it's not my decision what's my job to train them to take responsibility for their agency work i have been doing since they were infants and now that my daughters are teenagers i trust them to make good decisions and i trust them to come to me with questions and we have a rapport that i feel comfortable going to them with concerns and offering feedback based on their choices that is not work that started when they turned 11 that is work that started when they were born my job i've always approached parenting as teaching my children the benefits and consequences of different strategies and actions they can take and that includes with sex and sexuality that means i rage against gender-based dress codes anytime i see a disparity in society about how we approach men's bodies and women's bodies i stand in solidarity with my wife and daughters as a feminist in terms of modesty if it's okay for a boy you better be damn right it's okay for a girl or a person who's non-binary or a person who is trans i refuse to be complicit in a system that tells my daughters that their body is in some way uniquely tempting or provocative it makes me angry just thinking about it it just makes me angry thinking about it i've always focused on talking openly with my children about everything including sex in their bodies i've tried to have an age-appropriate conversation about consent and sex and rape i've tried to teach my children that it's against the rules for anyone to touch them without their consent as it's against the rules to touch another person without theirs i've been sure to mention over time that an abuser or an assaulter could be an adult friend a family member or another child i've taught my children not to give out their email addresses home addresses or phone numbers while using the internet an important part of safety i've taught my children that if something seems uncomfortable or if they seem resistant to being with a person i don't force them my children have given me great feedback about sleepovers in what adults they are comfortable being around i've taught my children that no means no and i've taught my children through example and through support to be confident in their emotions in their self and their decisions and to respect the emotions and decisions of other people as well these strategies when combined i gotta tell you i'm really proud of who my daughters are as people they're wise they make good choices they are honest and they communicate openly i don't take credit for that but i have done my best to help them discover who they are on their own and to empower them to have the information to understand the impacts of their own agencies i have not told my children that sex is a sin or that they have to save themselves until marriage but i have told them that safe sex is a myth but there's always a risk of pregnancy and sexually transmitted disease and so being careful and selective about how many partners we have and when we have partners and what protective measures people use during sexual acts is essential in minimizing those risks that can never be completely eliminated it means my children hopefully aren't terrified of sex but it's not a taboo topic and that they are relatively comfortable with their own body's desires and drives around sex sexuality and physical contact at the same time they feel empowered to dictate to others the way in which they will engage in such activity at the end of the day what we're talking about is a fundamentally different approach to relationships between parents and children i've just kind of i just think the psychology is clear that the traditional parents as ceo model has a lot of fall faults as does parents being best friends of their children likewise seems to have developmentally consequential downsides and i've tried to go with a research-based approach where i set clear boundaries and expectations for my children and freely offer emotional support to meet those boundaries and expectations as well as support when they don't and that's the strategies i've been implying or applying these years as a parent and i probably won't know for a few more years how well they've worked [Music] well you've done it you've made it through another episode of ask science mike if you're listening an apple podcast or a podcast player or you've watched the first ever video edition of ask science mike on youtube instagram or facebook which reminds me friends i am making so much stuff now uh so you can catch me multiple times a week on facebook live on instagram and youtube i've got a new series of videos uh encouragement mondays i've got uh science wednesdays i've got autism fridays that stuff is out there at science mic now we're going to try to expand that into video content as well especially depending on how this episode went and the kind of feedback i get from tanner and victory i'd like to thank several uh folks for making this show possible number one and always my patrons on patreon who fund this program if you'd like to help make this show financially possible and in the process take over the show and run it you can learn more by visiting asksciencemike.com and clicking on the patreon patreon button i'd like to thank caitlin hermstad for producing ass science mike greg nordine for production and sound design uh executive producer is victory palmisano logistics and other support by tanner hearn and the team at inverse brit cradle provides management services um my daughter macy provided some switchboard operating as we got this episode uh set up and the ass science bike theme song was written and recorded by my dear friend jeb botifor thanks for listening everybody and i can't wait to talk with you next week