Two Drinks with. . . a Warrior in the Mommy Wars

Erica Komisar—psychoanalyst and crusader in the mommy wars—is sitting across from me on her couch, sipping an oat milk cappuccino and smiling a winsome smile.

It’s past 4 p.m., and she’s been saving her caffeine hit for my visit.

We’re meeting at her apartment on the Upper West Side—a gorgeous condo with high ceilings and stunning views. Her cream-colored cockapoo puppy, Chester, joins us with an agenda of his own: gnawing at his pink toy rabbit.

In recent years, Komisar has become a social media superstar—with over 300,000 followers on Instagram, she describes herself as an “author helping parents to live their best lives and raise healthier children.” She talks a lot about how so many modern mothers do not securely attach to their babies, and is best known for her zingers—parents today are “pussies,” day cares are “warehouses for children,” sleep training is “neurologically damaging.”

“Many people that work for me have tried to curb how I describe things,” she says, laughing. “But it is the way I describe things!”

And it works. Her podcast appearances have accumulated millions of views. TikTok is full of viral clips from interviews she’s given. As a new mother, I find some of them unnerving. But in person, Komisar is less intimidating. She is elegant and bold, and has an air of authority: a mix of highly respected schoolteacher and fabulous auntie.

Komisar is 61, and at the peak of her career. She’s written three books. The first, published in 2017, is called Being There: Why Prioritizing Motherhood in the First Three Years Matters; it earned an endorsement from Kourtney Kardashian. (“Erica’s wisdom validated what I’ve always felt instinctively—that presence, especially in the early years, is everything.”) The second, Chicken Little the Sky Isn’t Falling, focused on raising teenagers in what she calls “the new age of anxiety.” And her latest, which will be published in a few weeks’ time, is called The Parent’s Guide to Divorce.

“Although divorce is really bad for all children in one way or another, a good divorce, a healthy divorce, is better than a bad marriage,” she says. “There are ways to mitigate the damage.” That’s what she says her new book is trying to do.

Erica and I met on Tuesday. The next ...