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The following podcast contains explicit language.

Hello and welcome to the Double X Gab Fest for Thursday, January 13th.

Welcome back, everyone.

This is Hannah Rosen, co-editor of Double X.

I'm here in the Washington studio with my co-co-editor, Emily Bazelon. How are you?

I'm good. And we are joined in New York by our managing editor, Jessica Gross. Hi, Jess.

Hi. Today is the Nietzsche and Nirvana edition of the Double X Gab Fest. We are going to start our discussion with the parents of Jared Lee Loeffner, who's the alleged shooter in the Tucson Rampage and generally the responsibility of parents in such cases.

Then we're going to move on to the female midlife crisis, which was defined in a New York Times article this weekend and several new novels that have come out.

And we're going to end by talking about a pair of stories in the Atlantic that basically argue that there has been no sexual revolution for women. Sorry, ladies. So let's begin with our most somber topic, which is Jared Lee Loeffner. His parents have issued a statement this week, which is a, you know, just what you'd expect, but also a slightly strange statement. They ask, we ask the media to

respect our privacy. There are no words that can possibly express how we feel. We wish that there

were so we could make you feel better, which is a sort of... And they didn't apologize,

which is telling. They didn't apologize. I mean, the problem in such cases is that eventually

our minds turned to the obvious question, where were his parents? Why weren't they making sure he was taking his medication?

Parents are eternally responsible for their children, even if they've passed the age of 18, especially when you think of someone who is severely disabled, in this case, schizophrenic.

You just wonder where were the parents? Now, that's not necessarily a fair question. I'm just saying that's a question that we asked.

Well, I want to back up because you said, was he taking his medication? We don't actually know that he was on any medication.

It was getting psychiatric help. And for me, that is the sort of baseline question about this whole case. And I do think that that question is a fair one to ask about a family in when

something like this happens. I mean, I think so in some ways. But the fact that he is 22 and not, say, 17 is also complex and sort of complicates any narrative you would make about his parents because for all intents and purposes, he is a grown man. He's treated as a grown man by the justice system.

He was living under their roof.

We know that.

But how much they would be able to control him and his actions at this point in terms of making him seek psychiatric help.

...