A father's most important job is treating the boys' mother with visible respect and affection in front of them. The speaker learned this the hard way: his own father's disrespect toward women shaped how he treated women as an adult, and he wishes he'd modeled kindness sooner.
I think the best thing you can do for boys is just treat their mother really well. They just see it. I really try to demonstrate emotion and affection around her. I defer to her judgment in front of the boys. I just try to make sure the boys know that their mother is really valuable and they see it by the way I treat her. I think that's going to create much more healthy relationships for them. I think that's the best thing you can do for your boys, even if you're divorced. Just be really good to the mother because my dad wasn't. And I think it really, quite frankly, Damaged my relationship probably with women. I think I could have been kinder to women when I was a young man.
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