The following podcast contains explicit language.

Welcome to Mom and Data Fighting, Slate's parenting podcast for Thursday, July 20th,

the Adventures in Babysitting Edition.

I'm Gabriel Roth.

I'm an editor at Slate, and I'm the father of Eliza who is six and Leo who is three.

I'm Rebecca Lavoie, a journalist and podcaster in New Hampshire. I am the mother of Henry, who is almost 16, Teddy who is 14, and a stepdaughter Lily, who is 17.

And I am Carvel Wallace, a writer and editor out in Oakland, California, and I am the father of Georgia who is 11, and Ezra, who is 14.

This week, we have a call from a dad with a highly unusual babysitting problem.

We're going to address that, and from there we're going to go into a discussion of the teens and young adults,

many of them entirely untrained, with whom we entrust our children's lives whenever we want to go see a movie.

And in Slate Plus, we're going to talk about the heightened drama and anxiety of putting your child on an airplane.

Okay, time for triumphs and fails. Rebecca,

you want to go? Yeah, I've got to fail this week. My fail is an easy one. It is that I had boys.

And it turns out that comes into play when your kids are about to start driving and you call for insurance quotes as they are

approaching getting their license. So I'm going to give you the real number so you have some

perspective here. Henry will complete driver's ed in a few weeks. He'll get his license. I'm guessing

right away because he's a really great driver. He can't wait to get his license and he's been

practicing for a really long time. So he's like good to go. Car insurance rates are actually not so bad here in

New Hampshire. My husband and I pay about two grand for our three cars now we have because Henry also

has a car queued up to go for him. And so far, the lowest quote I have gotten for car insurance, because my child is a boy, is $4,700, adding $2,700 to our $2,000 insurance bill.

And apparently, if he were a girl, it would be something like $1,000 less than that. I'm sure there are statistical reasons why it is the way that it is. I'm not going to say it's like sexist bullshit like I normally would go straight there. But man, did I fail in having boys when it comes to the expense of ensuring them as drivers. And I will just say, if anyone knows a better way to do this, just contact me through the Facebook page. I love to hear it. I've got a really great insurance broker, and she says this is just the way that it is. So that's my fail this week, is that I had boys. Not only that I have one, I had two. So that's going to be, I can't even imagine what the insurance bill will be in two years' time. Now, caveat, Henry does work a lot.

He is going to be paying for some, if not all, of his own insurance.

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