Warren Farrell - The Boy Crisis

Welcome, guys and gals, to the Man Talks Show. I'm Connor Beaton, the host and founder of Man Talks.

This podcast brings together some of the.

Best thought leaders, teachers, and extraordinary individuals to help teach and mentor you on how to be a top performer in life, love and business. Joining me today is a very special guest that I have wanted to have on this show for. I don't even know, since we started it, since before we started it. So joining me today is Dr. Warren Ferrell. And Dr. Warren Farrell has been chosen by the Financial Times as one of the world's top 100 thought leaders. He's also been chosen by the center for World Spirituality in 2011 as one of the world's top spiritual leaders, which is really interesting to me. And we didn't talk about this, but he actually doesn't talk about spirituality as much. He talks about a lot of other things. He is also an author of 11 or 12 books now, and his books have been published in over 50 countries and 15 languages. He is currently the chair of the Commission to Create a White House Council on Boys to Men and is co authoring a book called Boyz II Men with Dr. John Gray, who is the author of Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus. Now, Warren has been around for decades doing women's empowerment work, doing men's work, and he has, because of that, been. He's been really featured all over the place. He's taught at universities, at university level, in five different disciplines, and he's appeared on more than a thousand TV and radio shows, from the Oprah Winfrey show to the Larry King show, and has been repeatedly featured on Forbes, New York Times, and the Wall Street Journal. So not only that, but he's written some really incredible books. So he's written a few books like the Myth of Male Power, which is a New York Times bestseller, why Men Are the Way They Are, Father and Child Reunion, Women Can't Hear what Men Don't Say, and most recently, the Boy Crisis. So in this episode, Warren and I are going to dive into a few different topics. So we start in the very beginning of his career, and it's interesting because in the beginning of his career, he was one of the leading people that was in the forefront of the feminist movement.

And.

And so he really walks us through a historical retelling of the feminist movement from somebody who actually helped to start it. So it's really interesting because he dives into where it started, how it started, why it did, and how it's really evolved and progressed over the last four decades. And it's something that I really found fascinating, mostly because of his transition out of that, not necessarily away from it. Not that he doesn't believe in it or stepping away from the cause, but just some of the things that happened along the journey. And he really gives a really cool perspective on why the movement started, why the feminist movement started in the first place, and where it's actually at today. So really cool insight. Then we transition into boys and the development of younger boys into teenagers and men. And we talk about his most recent book called the Boy Crisis. Not even so much about the book. We actually dive straight into understanding parenting skills, understanding why so many boys, including myself, you know, grew up at labeled as adhd, how to actually handle that, why so many men aren't going to college anymore, dropping out from high school, suffering from high depression rates, suffering from, you know, suicide rates that are four times higher than women. And we really unpack some of these social challenges surrounding not only men, but the archetypes of masculinity and what Warren sees as being the sort of path forward. So this is a huge conversation. I really could have had him on the show for just hours. Could have done like a Joe Rogan two and a half hour, three hour special. So we also talk about fatherhood towards the end of this episode. So this is just packed with really incredible information with really incredible dialogue. So grab your pen and paper and don't forget to man it forward. Share this podcast with just one person goes a long way, or more if you want. It goes a long way to getting us into the ears and onto the.

Phones of other people.

So don't forget to subscribe, share it with somebody, and without any further delay, please welcome Dr. Warren Farrell.

All right, Warren, thank you so much for joining me on the Man Talk show.

I'm looking forward to it.

Cutter, I have been following your work for years and I really love some of the content that you put out. You've been requested numerous times by men in our community. So I know that this is going to go a long way for them, some new fathers and a lot of people that have been following your work. So I'm really looking forward to this.

Thank you. I'm looking forward to it too, especially to the new fathers.

Yeah. So just to dive in, I always ask the same question of the guest because it gives some good context to who they are. So tell us a story about a defining moment in your life that made you who you are today.

Wow. I think it was when my mother and father had sex the time that created me.

Probably a defining moment in my life.

That's definitely a defining moment.

Defining one thousandth of one second.

Right, Right.

So let's see. I'm gonna try to get myself away from that image, though.

Yeah. Now everybody's like, oh, yeah, that was.

A defining moment for me too.

Oh, boy. All right, here it is.

Another defining moment, I think, was when I was in high school and I was.

Talking. It was during the McCarthy era, and a number of people in classes were talking about how terrible the communists were. And. And I was saying, well, what do we hear directly from the communists from the Soviet Union at that time? And no one could answer anything that did not filter through the American version of what the communists were. And so I said, well, wouldn't it be a great idea to just hear directly from people in the Soviet Union and to listen to their perspective? And people I just was ganged up on and everyone say, are you a communist? You a sympathizer? That type of thing. And I'm realizing, oh, my God, this is dangerous to speak up. And then some years later, when I opposed the war in Vietnam, my father said, I may have to report you to the government as a Communist. I wasn't at all communists. I didn't think the war in Vietnam was a good idea. And I thought it was other destructive and self destructive and putting human life at risk for some very precarious reasons. And so. And then later, you know, when the civil rights movement came, I started to support that. And then the gay rights movements came and I started support that. And, you know, my father looked at me like I was already married, but was like, are you. Something you want to tell us? It was like, yes, something I do want to tell you. I think everyone should be able to have a life that is as fulfilling as possible without facing discrimination. And so there were so many. And then when I was involved with the women's movement, it was like I was like everybody's hero. And then as I began to say, well, you know, men have a perspective too. We should be listening more carefully to that. It was like.

I thought you were a feminist, the world's leading male feminist. Is something happening with you? And once again, it was like even people who were celebrities that I knew who were liberal, they. If I were to sort of talk about the conservative point of view at all, it would be like they would look at me with sort of suspicion in their eyes. And I began to realize that the thing that we need more than anything else is the ability to listen to other people's perspectives. And what I really, what attracted me to the feminist movement is that I felt that people were often castigating feminists as, you know, bra burners at that, you know, in the initial days and, you know, and as dykes, as they were often called. And this was not a complimentary word and nor was lesbian or gay a complimentary word. And I was, you know, on the Today show and Barbara Walters would say, you know, everything you say makes so much sense, but, you know, how can you associate yourself with somebody like Kate Millett who's declared that she's bisexual? And I said, well, maybe bisexual people have a broader view of the world because they're not hooked to the trees of heterosexuality from which they past which they cannot see. And she did move, but for the most part there was such an inability to hear people whose point of view differed from yours. And even. And while conservatives, I sort of more accepted that from. They weren't saying they were going to be all inclusive, but liberals were supposed to be more tolerant and all inclusive. And so I had a trouble and I associated myself as a liberal. So I had a real trouble when I saw the shortcomings of so many of my liberal friends. The first time I was on a show with Gloria Steinem and I questioned the first few times was fine, but the first time that I questioned the pay gap being about discrimination was Gloria just gave a signal to the producer of the home show, which was I had been on a national show during the daytime that I'd been on about eight or nine times. And the producer just said, we're going to go for a break. And then I was dismissed and the show was never aired and they never called me back and they didn't respond to any calls that I made. And I called Gloria Steinem after that and she didn't respond. And I sent her even a toy telephone in case her line was broken down.

And so. And haven't spoken to her except very briefly since then. And so I'd say that the turning points in my life have been my great disappointment at the inability of people to listen and the self righteousness of progressives to call themselves progressive, which by itself is a self righteous term. It's as self righteous as conservatives calling themselves patriots. You know, both sexes are both conservatives and liberals are both patriots. Progressives, regressive and unpatriotic in different ways.

I love that. I love the narrative and the story, the storyline that your life has sort of followed to emulate that lesson. And you know, to really pull forward some of this wisdom, that there's always insight to be seen on the other side of the fence. And I think that oftentimes people get so locked in their ego, their identity becomes so attached to, you know, these dogmatic viewpoints of looking at the world that the horse blinders sort of go on.

And it's funny, because what ends up happening, what I've seen happening time and time again, is that. That they seem to oftentimes ignore, not ignore, but be cut off from the empathy of other people's suffering, that somehow it becomes a suffering match.

That those people's suffering becomes more righteous or stronger or somehow more deeply felt than other people's suffering. And I think that whenever we have that experience, it's just coming from the ego that continues to separate us. I'm curious from your perspective because you've seen and been a huge part and advocate of the feminist movement in the beginning and sort of seen its progression. Before we dive into the book and the boy Crisis and some of these other pieces, I'm curious to get your perspective around the evolution of feminism and how you've seen it evolve over the years. Not necessarily so much looking for a good or bad, but just how you've seen it evolve and where it started to where you see it today in its evolution.

Well, I think feminism has done a huge amount of positive. It is. I have a sister and two daughters. And to have their life, they just assume that anything that they want to pursue in their life, they can pursue. And when I was growing up in the 1950s, I went to high school and 60s college, and I didn't.

That was not the case. If a woman was very bright, which many of our classmates female were, and they were channeled into, you'd be a great teacher. You'll be a great. You know, you'll be a great. Maybe a therapist. But it was a relatively narrow group of professions. And.

And then when it came to sports, it was not. Girls were not encouraged to go out there and play team sports in any major way to take those risks. When it came to sex, it was not, you know, girls were not. They were looked down upon if they took sexual initiatives. Today, there's still a huge amount of expectation on the part of males to initiate and the option on the part of females to initiate. So there's a huge gap and there's still much greater expectation on the part of men to pay.

For the privilege of being with the woman at a point in time when there's an interest in sex. So the gap is not even. And it's very rare today that a woman marries a man. A woman who wants to be a mother marries a man who she believes will always earn less than she. So there's still a lot of.

Aspects of discrimination. And the feminist movement. The feminist movement has opened up many options to women. That's the good news. The bad news is that it's demonized in the process. It did something that was politically very powerful. It's much more powerful politically to create an enemy and to unite your forces by saying there is an enemy. Well, the feminist movement worked from the hierarchy model. We went through the civil rights period in which there was truly an oppressor and unoppressed slave owners and slaves. And then feminism evolved a great deal from Marxism and Marxism. There was an oppressed oppressor group and an oppressed group, the rich and the working class. And then they just took that natural hierarchy and they took it over to males and females because men earned more. They said males were the oppressors and women were the oppressed. But in fact, nothing could have been further from the truth. The greater amount of money that men made represented the pressure on men. The pressure on men who became dads to give up the glint in their eye, the thing that they wanted to do. The starving artist, you know, the artist that was called starving for a reason. The actor that was usually called waiter.

The writer that my father told me, you cannot become a writer, Warren. There's only a chance in a thousand you'll ever make a living doing it. That's not responsible. What type of man are you?

And so fathers, men who became fathers. That's where the pay gap is, by the way. The pay gap is not between men and women. It's between fathers and mothers. And when families have children, that's when the dads feel the discrimination against them to earn more money so that they can play their role as father. That's not. The extra money they earn is not about male privilege. It's about male expectation, male pressure, and therefore the discrimination against them by social norms to feel that they have to earn more money and therefore they can't do what they really want to do, that they are expected to give up the glint in their eye. And if they don't, they're called Peter Pan. Not mature, not a man. And so they then. And then, because we're not allowed to express our feelings, we don't even mention that. It wasn't until the Pew Research center, for the first time a few years ago, asked men who had children who also were men who were working full time, would you prefer to be working full time or would you prefer to be involved with the children full time? And 49% of the men said, I'd prefer to be involved full time with the children, not be in the workplace at all. And this was not a setup question. This was just asked as a series of questions. And the Pew Research researchers were pretty shocked that about half of men said they would prefer to be with their children full time, but they didn't feel they could be because they were expected to do the earning of the. And we men have to take responsibility for that. We haven't spoken up. We haven't said what we needed. We haven't said what we wanted. We've absorbed the social pressure to be a man by keeping our mouth shut. And so women can't hear what men don't say. And we have to get up, stand up, and we have to say we want to be something other than wallets. When we are fathers, we want more time with our children. And when the question comes as to whether our wives are going to work full time or be with the children full time or do some combination of both, we want that same question asked of us. Do we want to work full time? Do we want to be with the children full time? Do we want to do some combination of both? So the shadow side of feminism has been to demonize men, create them as the oppressor, as the patriarchy and patriarchal group of. This is a world that is dominated by a patriarchy in which men have made the rules to benefit men at the expense of women. That attitude has completely misrepresented the best intent of men and the calling of boys in high school hearing the word male privilege, so that when they wish to speak up, they find that they're told, this is the time for you to shut up and men and women to speak up. And that you are, you know, that what you just said there, that's mansplaining. And, you know, the class sort of turns against you and backs off from you. And you learn that if you don't aren't 100% supportive of MeToo or whatever, is the current version of men as the oppressor and women as the oppressed, you are going to be in deep trouble and don't expect any social.

Support. So that's been the shadow side. The other shadow side of feminism has been an enormous undervaluing of the family. And that's what came. That's what I Learned most, I'd say, when I did the research for the boy crisis, because the boy crisis is in.

The boys that are in trouble are boys that have been disconnected from their father, boys that have minimal amount of time with their dad or no time at all with their dad. And that's in two groups of boys, boys who have minimal connection with their fathers after divorce, by the way. That's also very harmful for girls. And then secondly, boys and girls who don't have. Who have minimal or no connection with their dads as a result of their mother having children without being married, that usually leads to minimal or no connection with dads. And in those two huge groups, both girls and boys are suffering, but boys suffer considerably more from the breakup of family and especially from the lack of involvement of their role model fathers. At least girls in single mother families have their role model of a female there with them.

Wow.

I mean.

That was incredible. I think what you just unpacked there was so clear and apartment And I love the perspective of someone who.

Was.

At the very origins of the movement and can really speak to both sides of it, both the positive and the shadow side of the feminist movement and be able to unpack it with such clarity. I feel like we could dive into that for hours and have a conversation around that. But you did a good job of tying it into what we're really here to talk about, which is this boy crisis and how some of those pieces have actually led up to this point. And obviously, men have a role in this part, just like. Just like women do. And so can you give us just a bit of an overview? I mean, first off, I'm just curious, what prompted you to want to write this book?

It was originally some of the first.

Inspirations, if you will, when why Men Are the Way They Are and the Myth of Male Power came out in different countries. I would be going to places like Japan or Germany or Australia, and I'd be hearing from teachers, especially boys in our class are having so many problems. I wonder if this is true just in my area or just my school or if it's true other places as well. And as I began to hear this in country after country, it just sort of made me feel like something is happening here with the boys. And so I started to research that. And. And the more I researched it, I eventually began to find that, for example, in PISA tests, which are international tests that are given by the UN in all 63 of the largest developed nations, boys were falling behind girls in almost every academic subject. And especially reading and writing, which are the two biggest predictors of success. And so that really concerned me. Then I saw that the boys suicide rate in their early 20s was six times that of girls. But even though at the age of nine, it was even to the age of boys. So I saw something about the hormones and the socialization to be a male and keep your feelings to yourself and not share what's happening inside of you, which is perfect for heroic masculinity. But heroic masculinity is socialization for a short life versus health masculinity, health intelligence. Heroic intelligence is socialization for a short life. Health intelligence is socialization for a long life. And that includes things like opening up and expressing your feelings and sharing what's going on and being able to get support from other men who you realize instead of you being the only one that's feeling that way, there are other men are feeling that way. And so therefore not everything is wrong with you. This was not encouraged.

In us as guys. And so I began to. And I started some 300 men's groups around the country and had amazing experiences with these groups. You know, I think, as you probably read in the Boy Crisis book, you know, one of these. My wife finally persuaded me to reveal this, so I revealed it in some depth in the Boy Crisis book, You know, that this guy comes up to me at a party, and I had this underlying feeling that, you know, I was advocating men to be fathers a great deal. But there's a part of that advocacy that at the back was haunting me and said, you know, what? A real man who. A real man who could really be a winner in the world of success, which I did not agree with that type of definition of a real man or success. But there was another part of me that was still hanging on to that in my Neanderthal part of my brain. And. And so this guy comes up to me and says, you know, Warren, I joined one of the men's groups that you formed, but I know that you form these groups and then you go on and form another group and you disappear somewhat like the Lone Ranger. And so he was mocking me about that. And I was laughing and trying to laugh, and he was saying to me.

That the group, though, changed his life. And I said, how so? And he said, well, you know, I. I gave up my career and spent five years taking care of my son. And I did this because the last time I had a son, I was so preoccupied with my business, I never had real contact with him. And I feel really badly about that. And it led to a divorce, and now I'm remarried, and my wife says, we just found out that we're going to have a son. And so I don't want to repeat that again, but I'm also still tied into my business. And he said, I just didn't know what to do. And the men's group forced me to talk to my wife and see if she was okay with that, and also forced me to say, you know, basically said. When I said, I have too many contracts. I can't undo them. And they said, you know, John, what you're saying is that what you own owns you. And he goes, well, I guess that's sort of true. And they said, well, what would you want to do if you could do anything that you wanted to? And he said, I guess I'd want to take care of my new son, ideally full time, just like the Pew Research people said. And so he said that my wife gave me the okay, and the group was forcing me to sort of like, you know, break the contracts or renegotiate the contracts, do the things I needed to do to take care of what I wanted to do. And so he said, I did that. And as he's explaining all this to me, we're sitting there, I'm talking to him about all the details. An hour or so has passed, and somebody. I had just returned from my first book tour, this is in the 1970s, mid-70s. And the somebody comes up to our table and says, can I have your autograph? And I reach up to get, you know, his autograph, to sign his autograph, and he sort of looks a little bit awkward. And I said, something's happening here. What's what? You seem uncomfortable. And he says, well, actually, yes, I do want your autograph, too. But I was really especially looking for his autograph. So John just signs quickly the autograph and gets rid of it. And I think, you know, with this quicker signature and no gratitude, that must be. He must be very well known. And I didn't have a TV and rarely watched TV at the time, except if I was on it. And the. And so I said, well, you must be well known. Who are you? And he goes, john. And I said, well, John who? And he goes, john Lennon. And I go, oh, aren't you. And I'm proud of myself now. Aren't you a member. Member of a singing group? And I was really proud of myself for knowing that connection. And he goes, yes. And I said, what group is that? And he goes, the Beatles. At which point I knew that ignorant. I was not sort of head of my hands. But what I got out of that experience was even, here's probably the man in the world who had the most admirable career at the time. And he. And so had I asked him, how do you feel about your decision to raise Shawn? And by this time, Sean was almost two years old. And he said, warren, it was by far the best decision of my life. I used to write about love, think about love, talk about love, but I really didn't have a clue about what love really was until I raised Shawn. And. And every bit of me was focused on his needs, his desires, not what's the next best contract, where should I perform, you know, Yoko, do you want to come here or not? You know, that type of thing. And it was really. And so that's what brought out the best in me. And you know, what I find all over the world is that fathers rights groups are constantly fighting for the right of fathers to be with their children, not the rights of fathers to be away from their children. And once a father spends time with his children, he becomes what I call sometimes a child, a holic. He sees, you know, there is such. Such so many parts of him come out. And when I researched the boy crisis, I found that this is actually biologically true, that when you invest in a child, that there. That there's a. There's a whole nest of dormant neurons in every male's brain that never gets activated if they don't invest in their child, but when they do, it gets activated. And all the science of this is in the boy crisis. But just in brief terms.

That a whole dad instinct occurs when you behave in such a way that you breathe on your child when it's first born, when you're touching the belly of the mom and watching for the kicks, when you're involved in the feeding process to the degree you can't be the. And the sooner you do that, the more effectively your dad brain develops. And so all sorts of oxytocin.

Emanates from inside of your brain. And you find that experience, usually the most valuable experience of your life.

Incredible. Incredible. I mean, I think that that's, you know, the research that you put into the book is really amazing. I love the story of John Lennon too, because I think, you know, I've had a very similar path in some ways, and I resonate with your experiences. After I did my TED talk, the mask and masculinity I had, I still have, two years later, just so many single moms reaching out Saying, I have a boy and your talk resonated with me and what do I do? How do I get him around men? And his father's not involved in his life. And you know, he's struggling and going to speak at schools, all boys schools, you know, same thing. It's like, okay, some of these boys are struggling and just regular schools, or the boys are struggling and then meeting the fathers on the other side that are just really craving, really craving to step into this space of being exceptional fathers, of really being involved in their children's life, but struggling to actually know whether or not that's societally acceptable. And I look at my own father.

Who.

It'S interesting because I grew up in very different family dynamics where I had a traditional model with my mom and my stepdad, and a non traditional model was my dad and my stepmom, where she made considerably more money than he did. And he was the caretaker. He was, you know, he worked a 9 to 5, but he very much was a caretaker of the kids. He drove them to school, he made them lunch, he made the dinner, he cleaned the house. Like he did a. He did. He was a caretaker. And he got a lot of, a lot of flack from it by his friends, you know, being called the kept man. And you know, that, that kind of stuff. And it must be so easy. I wish I had your life. And these guys were really. He really was isolated over the years because he didn't fit into the traditional masculine model. So it was interesting to grow up between those two dynamics of seeing both of them. So I love the story of John Lennon because I think it's true that no matter what job you have, no matter what career path you're on, if you feel that spark, if that piece is there, finding a way to honor that with your partner I think is incredibly important.

So there's. I think there's really two things there. First, notice that what your dad, your biological dad was hearing is you're a kept man. Oh, that's really. Must be so easy. And so there's a part in that statement of envy, like, I wish I could have a life like that and get away with it. Like that you are trying to do.

Yet there is social pressure to not accept that easier way. That is admiring. But there's two huge things that every man needs to know. One is that children that have a significant amount of father involvement do better in more than 70 different documentable areas than children who do not have a significant amount of father involvement. And number two, what almost no Father knows. In the Boy Crisis book I have a whole section on what are the 10 differences between what dads do that lead to children doing so much better when children have significant father involvement than when they do not. And so I find that a lot of men and women.

That men do not have a clue as to what they do just naturally that leads to what is now scientifically proven to be so beneficial to children. I'll give you one example. Roughhousing. And my son was my son in law. My daughter's husband was saying with our grandchild that, you know that who's about one year of age that you know, he'll sit up and he'll gently push the grandchild over and go back like that and he just loves it. And then he sits back up again and expects to be pushed over again. And he is, and he just loves it. Comes up for more. And our daughter is like, that's gonna be really hard on him. And he might be crying someday, you know, that type of thing. And there'll be a day when my son in law will probably push him too hard or something like that will happen and he'll cry. And.

But my very few fathers sort of read about one of the things that you're likely to do that's different from this is just one of the ten that's different from what mom does is roughhousing. And here is what. And we know now that roughhousing helps children to distinguish between being assertive and being aggressive. But it also happens that many other things are encompassed just in this roughhousing difference. So for example, let's say you have your son and a younger boy than your son from the neighborhood and your daughter who's younger than your son. And they're all, you're roughhousing with all three of them. And they're all, the goal is that they're gonna try to get you down and beat you in the wrestling. And so, and you're struggling back and forth and mom's looking at this and she's going, oh my God, I see the kids are having fun. I don't want to interfere with this, but this is like, I just feel like I have just one more child to monitor. And if I and the kid, because the kids are laughing, I don't want to interfere. But on the other hand, sooner or later I know one of them is going to end up crying. And sooner or later somebody's going to bump their head, they're going to hit their head against each other against a coffee table or Whatever. I feel guilty if I intervene, and I feel guilty if I don't intervene. And soon enough, her prediction that one child's going to cry or they're going to hit their heads is 99.9% likely to be accurate.

One of the kids will sort of hit their head. And so the. And then the child starts crying, and the dad makes very little of it. And the mom is going, you know, not only. And then he continues the roughhousing. And the mom goes, didn't you learn your lesson? Everything I said is that sooner or later they were going to cry or there was going to be an accident here has come true. And you're still not paying attention. You're still going back to roughhousing. What is the matter with you? And the. And if there's a divorce situation, she already has a negative attitude toward him anyway. And so this just convinces her that he's insensitive, not emotionally connected and so on. Meantime, the kids are having a ball. And so. But what the dad is feeling, but he doesn't say to the mom, and what is now really an evidence is that this roughhousing process increases empathy. So what happens is that the child is being told by the dad, you know, don't pick on the younger boy from the neighborhood. And your sister just tried to get in here, and you blocked her out. Well, he blocked her out because he was really excited that he to. Wanted to be the one to dominate in the wrestling thing. But he's now learning from dad that if you do that one more time, you'll either be taken out of the roughhousing process or all the roughing housing will stop. It's usually that all the roughhousing will stop. So now the boy is learning that he has no option but to think of his sister's needs and to think of the other boy in the neighborhood's needs. And if he doesn't think of those needs, the roughhousing, the things he wants, the excitement, the roughhousing, that's going to stop. So he has an incentive to do that. But also if he. If the roughhousing stops for everyone as a result of one person being insensitive, the boy also learns that there that he is being punished, that the other children.

Are upset with him for being insensitive, not only for the insensitivity, but because he made them lose the roughhousing now. And so the. But dad doesn't say this to mom, but we now know that the more children are involved with their fathers, the more empathetic they're likely to be not. The more, the more they roughhouse, the more they learn to be assertive and not aggressive. Because at the boy is learning is that yes, you can do this to get ahead in the wrestling, but you can't do that. That was blocking out your sister, that was blocking out your young, younger, the younger person. And if you're older, you have to take responsibility for not doing that, for protecting, not for blocking off. And so, but exactly, but nobody in the world can explain exactly when is the right time and when is the wrong time to do that, because these are the newest nuances, are so are so great that they cannot be put into words. And so when the kids are doing this excitement, roughhousing, what they're learning is what psychologists call emotional intelligence under fire. And they're learning very subtle differences between what is, what is aggressive and what is assertive that cannot be explained to kids. And so that's just an amp. But, but then as a result of the roughhousing, a bond creates. So when dad says, okay, it's getting close to, you know, it's seven o', clock, you guys have to be in bed by 9 o'. Clock. And if, whatever, if you get your homework and all these conditions done, chores, brush teeth, brush, etcetera, we'll have more time together between from when you get everything done and all of you have to get everything done, you and your sister and your brother. And if you don't, and, and so it's in all of your best interest to help each other get it done so that you can have as much time as possible for yourselves and us to play together again between that time and your bedtime of 9:00'. Clock. Well, with mom, what we now know is moms are more likely to set earlier bedtimes, but children actually get to bed earlier with dads. And one of the reasons they do that is that dad says they'll be more fun for you.

When you get everything done. The sooner you get it done, the more time you have. So now what happens is that the children learn to focus with the dad on getting everything done that they need to get done. That additional focus on getting done what they need to get done teaches them postpone gratification. They can't have more fun until they do all the things that they need to do. Then they get the things that they want to do. That's postponed gratification. Well, as it turns out, postponed gratification is the single most important predictor of success. And when boys go into school and they have the skill of postponed gratification, which girls have a little bit more automatically.

They are more likely to get their homework done. They're more likely to be able to have the discipline to prepare for a sports team that they want to be on. So they're either a sports hero or they're respected because they get good grades, or they're a respected because they organize well and become student body president or yearbook editor. And so when it comes to boy girl time, the girls are interested in them, but if they don't do that well, the girls are not interested in them. If the girls aren't interested and the teachers don't respect them and their peers don't respect them and their parents aren't proud of them, they start withdrawing into video games, they start withdrawing into porn when it comes to boy girl time. And so in the worst case scenarios, especially if they have some genetic propensity toward depression, they move oftentimes into depression depressive modes. And then in even greater worst case scenarios, they are more likely to become suicidal, hence the six times greater suicide rate between boys and girls in their earlier 20s. And if in the very worst case scenarios, almost all of our school shooters are boys without significant father involvement or without any father involvement, almost all of our mass shooters are in that category. Boys who hurt, hurt themselves and boys who hurt us. And the amount that we spend each year defending against those boys who join isis, almost all ISIS recruits, boys and girls, have minimal or no father involvement. Almost all mass shooters have minimal or no father involvement. That is the power of father involvement. And so it is the responsibility, in my opinion, of every male to understand this, to not only understand it, but to not try to make peace with mom by not talking about it and backing off from standing up and saying in a very loving way, tell me what you do and what you need, and I will pay attention to that. But also I need to have, you know, here's the solid data behind my doing what I do and how it will benefit our children. So let's put the best of what we both have to offer into what I call checks and balance parenting. Let's put it both together and love our children most effectively.

So good, so powerful and profound. And I think just the way you laid it out there is just so clear of the importance of fatherhood, you know, and the roles that we can play. And I think we all conceptually and contextually know these things. But to just hear it backed up with some of the data and the research and such a, such a great Example, you know, the kids playing is, I think it really hits home. So let's dive a little bit deeper into the content of the boy crisis and maybe just give us a little bit of a context around some of those challenges. You've already unpacked a few of them, but. But some of the challenges that young boys are facing today and maybe why parenting today and in the future might look a little bit different from the past.

Yes, absolutely. So I think one of the things that really makes it clear is what's happening in Japan. In Japan, there's a word called karoshi, and that word translates to either death at the desk or death from overwork. And the boys in Japan have sort of. And the children in Japan have caught on that being a male oftentimes requires men to sort of, in a sense, die from working 60, 70 hours a week, to be called a salaryman, and therefore to be eligible for being married by a woman and to being respected by their parents. And so they recognize that this is just a weighted death, a weighted disposability. And just like treating a boy for a war to be a hero, we call him a hero. That's a social bribe to be willing to die earlier, to be disposable. And so they've caught on to this. And so they have one of the most popular games in Japan. It's called Death at the Desk. And the people who climb the ladder the fastest, the best, and get to the top at the. They are the winners. Yes, they are the winners. Who are the losers? And their reward is they off themselves, they kill themselves. Because basically they're saying that to win at this game of traditional masculinity, of climbing the ladders, the ladder every rung faster than anyone else to a wall that you've never asked yourself whether you want to be up at them wall at all, but just to do what's expected of you is not power, it's powerlessness. And so they are. They are experienced. And so boys around the world are experiencing what I call this boys unconscious wisdom of sensing that there's something wrong, something that is not powerful about male power, something that's not privileged about male privilege, but they don't quite know how to put their fingers on it. And so what I'm hoping in the Boy Crisis book is that I will be able to articulate that well enough so that parents can see what their boys are struggling to articulate.

And because a father is so crucial to a boy to be able to articulate something that is as confusing as that and to talk it through. That's one of the reasons why fathers need to be involved. Girls have very clear messages. You can be whatever you want to be. That's not boys messages. The message to boys is still in the old days you had purpose. You could die earlier in war or you could risk your life as a coal miner. As long as you provided money for your family. If you died sooner, you were still, you were a hero. And so that your disposability gave you purpose. But now there are women are taking some of the burden off of men in terms of being sole breadwinners. That's wonderful. But it's taking away that purpose as a definition of masculinity. And men are not having to die nearly as often in war as women as they used to. And so that's taking, that's wonderful also, but it's also taking away that purpose. So there's this generation with a purpose boy. But the old senses of purpose, climbing that ladder or dying early in war are looking very.

Not so enticing to boys.

And so girls have a cultural permission and they have when they're raised by single mothers or after divorce or single mothers by choice to begin with, they have a role model of a mother. But boys who don't have fathers don't have a role model of a father. And they have a confusing set of purposes that are not clear to them, which makes them need a father at this point in history more than they ever have needed fathers before.

And when they don't have this ability to talk at family dinner nights about the senses of purpose that they have and be listened to carefully by mom and by dad and by sister and brother and here and then by neighbor who comes over at occasional family dinner nights and talks about his experiences as well. Or they don't have if they're raised by a single mother, they don't have, they're not encouraged, if they're not encouraged to join the Cub Scouts and the Boy Scouts or be involved in a faith based community, they don't have.

Either a father or good male role models to mentor them through the process of what is a more confusing, but also in the good news sense, greater opportunity to be your own unique self than we've ever had in history before, that opportunity is waiting right before boys. But it's, it needs adult guidance of conscious, thoughtful adults being consistently involved with boys to take and listening very carefully. But also after they've listened, give advice that they are required to listen to as part of the growth process. And so Those are some of the things that I hope I say in the boy crisis effectively.

To bring families together and to give our boys an opportunity to not be suffering by having a greater amount of suicide, dropping out of school, being less likely to be employed. These are some of the things that are creating the boy crisis. Being much more likely to be depressed, withdrawing into video games, feeling rudderless, purposeless, and then channeling their non well directed testosterone in destructive ways when they don't have parental involvement of both of sexes.

Yeah, I mean, so, so powerful. And I think one of the, one of the big challenges that I see a lot of men, men facing today, a lot of men that I work with that are in the community is just this sense of lostness, you know, and you had mentioned Peter Pan before and the, you know, the purpose void. And it seems to, seems to be that there is a lot of this Peter Pan syndrome, you know, where a lot of guys are in their early 30s, still completely missing and lacking a sense of direction and purpose. And, and you know, there's a great quote by Frederick Douglass that says it's easier to raise strong boys than it is to repair broken men. And while I've always thought, yeah, that's absolutely true, but if those broken men are raising kids, if those lost men are raising kids and they don't have a sense of purpose and they're still hurting, that's where it gets passed on. So I'm curious just because I know we do have to wrap up here pretty quick. Just can you speak to the purpose void? And you know, now that those sort of older, those older places of purpose where men would normally find purpose in their lives, now that those are sort of being not taken away, but they're being removed and societally those are being removed, where do men start to lean in? Where do you see boys starting to heal and find a sense of purpose? What's actually filling the void for them?

Yes, first of all, nothing is filling the void in most cases if they don't have a lot of father involvement. Now if you're listening to this as a single mom and you're saying that, you know, there's two things you can do, one is.

Really study the section in the boy crisis about what dads do differently. And almost always when a dad feels valued for his unique contributions, he comes into the fold. It's when he doesn't feel value that he doesn't.

Or if the decision to have that child to begin with was not also a partner decision that he was involved with. And so.

The first and just if you don't, if that doesn't ring true for you, just think about Uncle Sam needs you. Think about every single generation had its war. And in each of those generations men were told you're needed. Your unique contribution as a man to fight, even if.

Makes you needed by us and it's clear that you'll be willing that you will have to potentially die in that process. So if a man is willing to die when he's told he's needed, if you know what a man contributes and you value that and express that to a dad, instead of penalizing him for roughhousing, you acknowledge him for what you know about the. All the things that are happening in roughhousing that will bring a very high percentage of men back. But if on the other hand, you know the, the father is abusive in major ways like getting constantly drunk and driving while drunk while the child's in the seat and you can change that behavior.

Then you know. And so let's take the worst case scenario where it's absolutely impossible to bring the man into the scene. Maybe he's dead. And option number two is to get your son involved in Cub Scouts, get him involved in Boy Scouts, get him involved in team sports, get him involved in individual sports, get him involved in pick up game sports where he learns to meet people, learning how to meet people. He may get beaten up by somebody at some point in time. And then process with him what led to, what were the red flags that led to him getting beaten up. So he learns to take some of the blows of life when you're around to guide him. That's what dads do. That helped boys take responsibility for their own decisions rather than being protected, protected and protected and then going out in the world where they're completely unprotected.

Which is the real abuse of boys. And so second, if you're faith based in your orientation, no matter what your faith, find a faith based community. Find a good sensitive male leader who, who's not just an advisor but who gets boys together to talk with each other so your son doesn't feel so lonely and cut off and that the feelings he's feeling about sexuality in particular are only his feelings and therefore he feels guilty and shamed about that. And so these are some of the types of things that you.

Mentorship for a moment. Everybody knows that men, boys need good mentors. That's absolutely true. Find your boy a good mentor, but make sure that mentor commits to be consistently involved with your son and to be involved with your son, even if it isn't pleasant and rewarding to be involved with your son. And then second, make sure that you get him not only to have a mentor, but to be a mentor. No matter how young your boy son is over the age of five or six, there's somebody younger that he can guide. And when a boy looks at his decisions through how will the boy I'm guiding think of me if he finds out that I do this or think this this way? This helps him feel like I have a responsibility to be more than I am. I have a responsibility to be something that other people can be guided well by and that helps the boy develop the best parts of himself. So in brief, there it is more helpful for your son to be a mentor than it is for your son to be mentored, even though both are helpful.

Amazing.

Amazing.

Well, thank you so much for all of this insight, for touching on a few different things. I feel like maybe one day we'll have you back on and we'll just talk about fatherhood and best practices because I feel like that's a whole episode in itself. So I appreciate you being on the show. Thank you so much.

Thank you for your TED Talk on the masks of masculinity. That's so right on and so well presented in your gentle and caring spirit. And thanks for your questions and the way you listen.

Thank you very much. So for everybody that's out there listening, if you appreciated this episode, if you got value out of it, don't forget to man it forward. Share it with just one person goes a long way to sharing this information and this knowledge with other people. Don't forget to subscribe. If you are on Spotify, Stitcher or itunes, you can leave a rating for us. And until next week, this is Connor Beaton signing off. Join me next week for another inspiring conversation with another inspiring individual.