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Alisa Volkman: So this is where our story begins --

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the dramatic moments of the birth

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of our first son, Declan.

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Obviously a really profound moment,

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and it changed our lives in many ways.

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It also changed our lives in many unexpected ways,

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and those unexpected ways we later reflected on,

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that eventually spawned a business idea between the two of us,

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and a year later, we launched Babble,

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a website for parents.

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Rufus Griscom: Now I think of our story

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as starting a few years earlier. AV: That's true.

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RG: You may remember, we fell head over heels in love.

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AV: We did.

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RG: We were at the time running a very different kind of website.

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It was a website called Nerve.com,

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the tagline of which was "literate smut."

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It was in theory, and hopefully in practice,

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a smart online magazine

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about sex and culture.

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AV: That spawned a dating site.

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But you can understand the jokes that we get. Sex begets babies.

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You follow instructions on Nerve and you should end up on Babble,

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which we did.

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And we might launch a geriatric site as our third. We'll see.

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RG: But for us, the continuity between Nerve and Babble

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was not just the life stage thing,

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which is, of course, relevant,

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but it was really more about

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our desire to speak very honestly

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about subjects that people have difficulty speaking honestly about.

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It seems to us that

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when people start dissembling, people start lying about things,

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that's when it gets really interesting.

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That's a subject that we want to dive into.

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And we've been surprised to find, as young parents,

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that there are almost more taboos around parenting

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than there are around sex.

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AV: It's true. So like we said,

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the early years were really wonderful,

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but they were also really difficult.

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And we feel like some of that difficulty

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was because of this false advertisement around parenting.

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(Laughter)

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We subscribed to a lot of magazines, did our homework,

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but really everywhere you look around, we were surrounded by images like this.

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And we went into parenting

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expecting our lives to look like this.

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The sun was always streaming in, and our children would never be crying.

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I would always be perfectly coiffed and well rested,

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and in fact, it was not like that at all.

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RG: When we lowered the glossy parenting magazine

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that we were looking at, with these beautiful images,

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and looked at the scene in our actual living room,

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it looked a little bit more like this.

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These are our three sons.

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And of course, they're not always crying and screaming,

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but with three boys, there's a decent probability

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that at least one of them will not be comporting himself

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exactly as he should.

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AV: Yes, you can see where the disconnect was happening for us.

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We really felt like what we went in expecting

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had nothing to do with what we were actually experiencing,

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and so we decided we really wanted to give it to parents straight.

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We really wanted to let them understand

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what the realities of parenting were in an honest way.

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RG: So today, what we would love to do

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is share with you four parenting taboos.

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And of course, there are many more than four things

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you can't say about parenting,

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but we would like to share with you today

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four that are particularly relevant for us personally.

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So the first, taboo number one:

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you can't say you didn't fall in love with your baby

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in the very first minute.

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I remember vividly, sitting there in the hospital.

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We were in the process of giving birth to our first child.

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AV: We, or I?

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RG: I'm sorry.

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Misuse of the pronoun.

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Alisa was very generously in the process

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of giving birth to our first child -- (AV: Thank you.)

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-- and I was there with a catcher's mitt.

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And I was there with my arms open.

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The nurse was coming at me

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with this beautiful, beautiful child,

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and I remember, as she was approaching me,

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the voices of friends saying,

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"The moment they put the baby in your hands,

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you will feel a sense of love that will come over you

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that is [on] an order of magnitude more powerful

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than anything you've ever experienced in your entire life."

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So I was bracing myself for the moment.

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The baby was coming,

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and I was ready for this Mack truck of love

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to just knock me off my feet.

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And instead, when the baby was placed in my hands,

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it was an extraordinary moment.

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This picture is from literally a few seconds after

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the baby was placed in my hands and I brought him over.

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And you can see, our eyes were glistening.

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I was overwhelmed with love and affection for my wife,

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with deep, deep gratitude

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that we had what appeared to be a healthy child.

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And it was also, of course, surreal.

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I mean, I had to check the tags and make sure.

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I was incredulous, "Are you sure this is our child?"

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And this was all quite remarkable.

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But what I felt towards the child at that moment was deep affection,

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but nothing like what I feel for him now, five years later.

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And so we've done something here

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that is heretical.

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We have charted

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our love for our child over time.

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(Laughter)

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This, as you know, is an act of heresy.

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You're not allowed to chart love.

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The reason you're not allowed to chart love

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is because we think of love as a binary thing.

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You're either in love, or you're not in love.

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You love, or you don't love.

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And I think the reality is that love is a process,

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and I think the problem with thinking of love

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as something that's binary

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is that it causes us

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to be unduly concerned

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that love is fraudulent, or inadequate, or what have you.

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And I think I'm speaking obviously here to the father's experience.

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But I think a lot of men do go through this sense

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in the early months, maybe their first year,

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that their emotional response is inadequate in some fashion.

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AV: Well, I'm glad Rufus is bringing this up,

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because you can notice where he dips in the first years

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where I think I was doing most of the work.

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But we like to joke,

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in the first few months of all of our children's lives,

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this is Uncle Rufus.

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(Laughter)

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RG: I'm a very affectionate uncle, very affectionate uncle.

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AV: Yes, and I often joke with Rufus when he comes home

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that I'm not sure he would actually be able to find our child in a line-up

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amongst other babies.

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So I actually threw a pop quiz here onto Rufus.

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RG: Uh oh.

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AV: I don't want to embarrass him too much. But I am going to give him three seconds.

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RG: That is not fair. This is a trick question. He's not up there, is he?

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AV: Our eight-week-old son is somewhere in here,

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and I want to see if Rufus can actually quickly identify him.

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RG: The far left. AV: No!

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(Laughter)

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RG: Cruel.

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AV: Nothing more to be said.

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(Laughter)

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I'll move on to taboo number two.

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You can't talk about how lonely having a baby can be.

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I enjoyed being pregnant. I loved it.

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I felt incredibly connected to the community around me.

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I felt like everyone was participating in my pregnancy, all around me,

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tracking it down till the actual due-date.

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I felt like I was a vessel of the future of humanity.

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That continued into the the hospital. It was really exhilarating.

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I was shower with gifts and flowers and visitors.

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It was a really wonderful experience,

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but when I got home,

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I suddenly felt very disconnected

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and suddenly shut in and shut out,

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and I was really surprised by those feelings.

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I did expect it to be difficult,

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have sleepless nights, constant feedings,

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but I did not expect the feelings

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of isolation and loneliness that I experienced,

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and I was really surprised that no one had talked to me,

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that I was going to be feeling this way.

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And I called my sister

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whom I'm very close to -- and had three children --

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and I asked her, "Why didn't you tell me

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I was going to be feeling this way,

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that I was going to have these -- feeling incredibly isolated?"

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And she said -- I'll never forget --

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"It's just not something you want to say to a mother

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that's having a baby for the first time."

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RG: And of course, we think

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it's precisely what you really should be saying

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to mothers who have kids for the first time.

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And that this, of course, one of the themes for us

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is that we think

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that candor and brutal honesty

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is critical to us collectively

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being great parents.

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And it's hard not to think

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that part of what leads to this sense of isolation

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is our modern world.

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So Alisa's experience is not isolated.

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So your 58 percent of mothers surveyed

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report feelings of loneliness.

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Of those, 67 percent are most lonely

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when their kids are zero to five -- probably really zero to two.

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In the process of preparing this,

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we looked at how some other cultures around the world

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deal with this period of time,

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because here in the Western world,

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less than 50 percent of us live near our family members,

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which I think is part of why this is such a tough period.

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So to take one example among many:

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in Southern India

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there's a practice known as jholabhari,

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in which the pregnant woman, when she's seven or eight months pregnant,

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moves in with her mother

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and goes through a series of rituals and ceremonies,

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give birth and returns home to her nuclear family

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several months after the child is born.

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And this is one of many ways

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that we think other cultures offset this kind of lonely period.

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AV: So taboo number three:

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you can't talk about your miscarriage -- but today I'll talk about mine.

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So after we had Declan,

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we kind of recalibrated our expectations.

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We thought we actually could go through this again

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and thought we knew what we would be up against.

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And we were grateful that I was able to get pregnant,

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and I soon learned that we were having a boy,

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and then when I was five months,

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we learned that we had lost our child.

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This is actually the last little image we have of him.

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And it was obviously a very difficult time --

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really painful.

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As I was working through that mourning process,

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I was amazed that I didn't want to see anybody.

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I really wanted to crawl into a hole,

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and I didn't really know how I was going

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to work my way back into my surrounding community.

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And I realize, I think, the way I was feeling that way,

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is on a really deep gut level,

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I was feeling a lot of shame

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and embarrassed, frankly,

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that, in some respects, I had failed

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at delivering what I'm genetically engineered to do.

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And of course, it made me question,

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if I wasn't able to have another child,

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what would that mean for my marriage,

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and just me as a woman.

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So it was a very difficult time.

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As I started working through it more,

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I started climbing out of that hole and talking with other people.

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I was really amazed

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by all the stories that started flooding in.

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People I interacted with daily,

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worked with, was friends with,

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family members that I had known a long time,

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had never shared with me their own stories.

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And I just remember feeling all these stories came out of the woodwork,

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and I felt like I happened upon

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this secret society of women that I now was a part of,

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which was reassuring and also really concerning.

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And I think,

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miscarriage is an invisible loss.

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There's not really a lot of community support around it.

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There's really no ceremony,

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rituals, or rites.

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And I think, with a death, you have a funeral, you celebrate the life,

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and there's a lot of community support,

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and it's something women don't have with miscarriage.

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RG: Which is too bad because, of course,

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it's a very common and very traumatic experience.

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Fifteen to 20 percent of all pregnancies result in miscarriage,

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and I find this astounding.

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In a survey, 74 percent of women said

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that miscarriage, they felt, was partly their fault, which is awful.

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And astoundingly, 22 percent

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said they would hide a miscarriage from their spouse.

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So taboo number four:

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you can't say that your average happiness

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has declined since having a child.

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The party line is that every single aspect of my life

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has just gotten dramatically better

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ever since I participated

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in the miracle that is childbirth and family.

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I'll never forget, I remember vividly to this day,

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our first son, Declan, was nine months old,

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and I was sitting there on the couch,

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and I was reading Daniel Gilbert's wonderful book, "Stumbling on Happiness."

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And I got about two-thirds of the way through,

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and there was a chart on the right-hand side --

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on the right-hand page --

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that we've labeled here

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"The Most Terrifying Chart Imaginable

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for a New Parent."

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This chart is comprised of four completely independent studies.

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Basically, there's this precipitous drop

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of marital satisfaction,

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which is closely aligned, we all know, with broader happiness,

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that doesn't rise again

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until your first child goes to college.

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So I'm sitting here looking at the next two decades of my life,

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this chasm of happiness

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that we're driving our proverbial convertible straight into.

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We were despondent.

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AV: So you can imagine, I mean again, the first few months were difficult,

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but we'd come out of it,

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and were really shocked to see this study.

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So we really wanted to take a deeper look at it

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in hopes that we would find a silver lining.

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RG: And that's when it's great to be running a website for parents,

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because we got this incredible reporter

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to go and interview all the scientists

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who conducted these four studies.

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We said, something is wrong here.

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There's something missing from these studies.

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It can't possibly be that bad.

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So Liz Mitchell did a wonderful job with this piece,

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and she interviewed four scientists,

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and she also interviewed Daniel Gilbert,

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and we did indeed find a silver lining.

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So this is our guess

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as to what this baseline of average happiness

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arguably looks like throughout life.

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Average happiness is, of course, inadequate,

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because it doesn't speak

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to the moment-by-moment experience,

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and so this is what we think it looks like

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when you layer in

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moment-to-moment experience.

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And so we all remember as children,

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the tiniest little thing -- and we see it on the faces of our children --

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the teeniest little thing

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can just rocket them to these heights

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of just utter adulation,

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and then the next teeniest little thing

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can cause them just to plummet to the depths of despair.

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And it's just extraordinary to watch, and we remember it ourselves.

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And then, of course, as you get older,

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it's almost like age is a form of lithium.

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As you get older, you become more stable.

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And part of what happens, I think, in your '20s and '30s,

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is you start to learn to hedge your happiness.

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You start to realize that

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"Hey, I could go to this live music event

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and have an utterly transforming experience

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that will cover my entire body with goosebumps,

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but it's more likely that I'll feel claustrophobic

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and I won't be able to get a beer.

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So I'm not going to go.

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I've got a good stereo at home. So, I'm not going to go."

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So your average happiness goes up,

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but you lose those transcendent moments.

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AV: Yeah, and then you have your first child,

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and then you really resubmit yourself

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to these highs and lows --

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the highs being the first steps, the first smile,

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your child reading to you for the first time --

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the lows being, our house, any time from six to seven every night.

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But you realize you resubmit yourself

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to losing control in a really wonderful way,

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which we think provides a lot of meaning to our lives

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and is quite gratifying.

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RG: And so in effect,

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we trade average happiness.

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We trade the sort of security and safety

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of a certain level of contentment

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for these transcendent moments.

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So where does that leave the two of us

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as a family with our three little boys

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in the thick of all this?

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There's another factor in our case.

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We have violated yet another taboo

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in our own lives,

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and this is a bonus taboo.

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AV: A quick bonus taboo for you, that we should not be working together,

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especially with three children --

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and we are.

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RG: And we had reservations about this on the front end.

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Everybody knows, you should absolutely not work with your spouse.

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In fact, when we first went out to raise money to start Babble,

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the venture capitalists said,

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"We categorically don't invest

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in companies founded by husbands and wives,

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because there's an extra point of failure.

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It's a bad idea. Don't do it."

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And we obviously went forward. We did.

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We raised the money, and we're thrilled that we did,

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because in this phase of one's life,

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the incredibly scarce resource is time.

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And if you're really passionate about what you do every day -- which we are --

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and you're also passionate about your relationship,

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this is the only way we know how to do it.

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And so the final question that we would ask is:

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can we collectively bend that happiness chart upwards?

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It's great that we have these transcendent moments of joy,

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but they're sometimes pretty quick.

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And so how about that average baseline of happiness?

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Can we move that up a little bit?

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AV: And we kind of feel that the happiness gap, which we talked about,

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is really the result of walking into parenting --

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and really any long-term partnership for that matter --

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with the wrong expectations.

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And if you have the right expectations and expectation management,

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we feel like it's going to be a pretty gratifying experience.

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RG: And so this is what --

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And we think that a lot of parents,

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when you get in there -- in our case anyway --

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you pack your bags for a trip to Europe, and you're really excited to go.

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Get out of the airplane,

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it turns out you're trekking in Nepal.

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And trekking in Nepal is an extraordinary experience,

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particularly if you pack your bags properly

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and you know what you're getting in for and you're psyched.

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So the point of all this for us today

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is not just hopefully honesty for the sake of honesty,

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but a hope that by being more honest and candid about these experiences,

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that we can all collectively

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bend that happiness baseline up a little bit.

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RG + AV: Thank you.

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(Applause)