Welcome to Kelly Corrigan Wonders. I'm Kelly Corrigan, and today I'm wondering about the

quantification of society and the anxious impulses it magnifies. I'm joined by a few young friends,

moms, professionals, tryhards, Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrell.

Alexa is currently working with social psychologist Jonathan Haidt on The Anxious Generation

and is navigating early parenthood herself with a three-year-old son.

Kate is a leadership coach and trainer who owns her own business, is raising two teenage daughters,

and to stay humble and quick on her feet, does improv comedy. Today begins a three-part series

on parenting and ambition with a conversation about tracking our kids. Should we monitor their

location, check their data, read their text, follow their friends on social media.

And what are we really searching for when we check our phones in the middle of the night?

Here's my conversation with Alexa Arnold and Kate Cockrell.

Hi, TriHards.

Hey.

Hi.

Okay.

So this is a series that it goes out with love from us to every ambitious parent out there who wants to make good on the very best version of themselves. They can possibly muster day by day. It's tall order and there's a ton of failure. And so I'm going to start.

This is my episode and it's my issue that I want to bring to the table and see what you try hard say about it.

So a thing that has happened since I was a kid is that there have become this just litany of ways that you could track your child and all kinds of data that you could get.

You could get their school data each afternoon.

You could see if they handed in their assignment, if they were a minute and a half late to class.

Of course, you can get everything from the pediatrician.

But the availability of data sometimes can drive what you suddenly think you care about.

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