Order of Man - The Boy Crisis ｜ DR. WARREN FARRELL

00:00:00.000 There is no question our boys are in trouble. Take a look at any metric and it becomes painfully

00:00:05.000 obvious that our young men are falling behind. Violence, grades, drug abuse, and suicide to name

00:00:11.540 a few. The question is not, is it happening, but why? Today I am joined by Dr. Warren Farrell,

00:00:17.040 a leader in understanding the issues our boys are facing. We talk about how men have fallen

00:00:21.740 into a purpose void, why boys need to be raised differently than girls, the rise of the incels,

00:00:28.000 and how to deal with the emerging boy crisis. You're a man of action. You live life to the

00:00:33.420 fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back

00:00:38.960 up one more time. Every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.

00:00:46.540 This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day,

00:00:51.920 and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on?

00:00:57.520 My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder of this podcast and this movement,

00:01:01.480 The Order of Man. As I do every week, I want to welcome you. Whether you're just tuning in

00:01:05.940 or you've been with us for any amount of time, this movement continues to grow, and it's a testament to

00:01:11.260 the fact that what we are doing here is much needed. In a society that is seeming to more and

00:01:17.480 more dismiss masculinity, we are trying to reclaim it. So we're banding together with tens of thousands,

00:01:24.100 hundreds of thousands, even millions of men across the planet, all working together to

00:01:27.900 become better fathers, husbands, business owners, community leaders. And we do that

00:01:32.680 partially through this podcast. We're interviewing the world's most successful men. These are guys

00:01:37.720 like Jocko Willink, Lewis Howes, Andy Frisilla, Grant Cardone, Tim Kennedy. I mean, we've got so

00:01:43.180 many great guests that have come on the show and we will continue to have great guests like we do

00:01:48.040 today, Dr. Warren Farrell. But before I get into that, like I do every week, just a couple of

00:01:52.380 quick announcements. Number one, if you would, please leave a rating and review for this podcast.

00:01:56.960 We actually went up from the number 98 position in all of business on iTunes up to number 22 within

00:02:05.920 a period of 24 hours because we had about 50 reviews coming in. We're doing a big push for ratings and

00:02:12.960 reviews. And up until the end of September, we're running a contest. We'll be giving away shirts,

00:02:19.920 hats, signed copies of the book. We're entering you into drawings for one-on-one conversations

00:02:24.820 with me. And we're also thinking about doing an event that will pick a handful of those of you

00:02:30.640 who have left a rating and review between now and the end of September for a event. This probably will

00:02:37.440 be a one or two day event and we'll take care of the costs associated with that and have a pretty

00:02:42.700 good weekend together. So if you are interested in joining that drawing and being entered for the

00:02:49.460 swag and the merchandise and the hats and the shirts and the books and everything else that we're going

00:02:53.300 to be giving away, all you have to do is leave a review. We're monitoring those. We're checking those

00:02:57.000 out. Leave a rating review on iTunes between now and the end of September, and you will be entered

00:03:02.700 into the drawings. Now, the other thing I wanted to make mention of is our store. I just had a new

00:03:09.140 shirt come out, which I think you guys will like. It's a protect, provide, preside shirt.

00:03:12.860 So make sure you check that out as well as order of man flags. I've had so many questions and people

00:03:19.220 asking about when a flag would be available. There are order of man flags available now.

00:03:24.160 We just announced those last week and we've sold a ton of those. So make sure you jump on that quick.

00:03:30.400 You can see our, our merchandise at store.orderofman.com. So leave a rating review,

00:03:36.060 head to our store. That's all the announcements. So with that done and out of the way, I want to

00:03:41.340 introduce you to my guest today. Really excited about this one, guys. His name is Dr. Warren

00:03:47.120 Farrell. He's a leader in the movement to understand the myriad of issues that our young

00:03:53.380 men are facing. I'm sure you're well aware of some of these. Previously, a feminist and the only man 1.00

00:03:58.280 to ever be elected three times to the National Organization for Women. He's since seen what the

00:04:03.700 feminist movement has become and its negative impact on our boys. He's been selected as one of the

00:04:10.020 world's top 100 thought leaders. And he's been on CNN, Larry King Live, Oprah, The Today Show,

00:04:17.020 Good Morning America. He's been on New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal. I mean,

00:04:21.480 he's just been everywhere. And you're going to hear why as we go through this conversation today.

00:04:25.580 But he's taught at all levels of education. And he speaks at Fortune 500 companies,

00:04:30.860 military branches. He spoke at NASA. It was such an honor to talk with Dr. Farrell and get so much

00:04:37.820 incredible insight into his own thoughts and boys and gender in general. And I know I walked away

00:04:43.620 with a ton of information with regards to raising my sons and daughter. So guys, I hope you enjoy the

00:04:49.060 conversation. Warren, good to talk with you. I'm excited to have this conversation today.

00:04:54.420 Thank you. I'm looking forward to it too. I love your vibration, your informality.

00:04:58.460 Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I try to have just an open dialogue, an open discussion. And there's

00:05:03.600 some things that, man, in reading your book, The Boy Crisis, and obviously becoming familiar with your

00:05:08.520 work, it's just, it really resonates with me because I've got kids of my own. I've got four

00:05:13.240 children. I've got three boys. And I recognize a lot of what you're talking about. And as I was going

00:05:18.320 through this book, I just thought to myself, yes, yes, yes. Like a checklist of all the things that

00:05:22.940 I'm dealing with as a father and the things that I know my boys will be dealing with as well. So

00:05:28.280 looking forward to the conversation. Can you give me an example of one or two of those things that

00:05:32.220 just struck you as something that you're dealing with as a father? With education system, my kids

00:05:36.620 aren't that old yet. I have, my oldest is 10 years old, but I can definitely see in the educational

00:05:41.260 system how that seems to be stacked against him. He's told, frankly, to sit down, to shut up,

00:05:46.280 to color within the lines, to do what he's told. And from my experience, personal experience,

00:05:50.540 that's not how I enjoyed learning. And it's not how I enjoy learning now. And so I can see how

00:05:56.400 difficult it's going to be when it comes to getting him to engage in meaningful information

00:06:03.000 that's going to improve his life. Yes. So you didn't like learning in handcuffs and mental cuffs?

00:06:08.700 In college, I went to about a half a semester of college and I said, I'm out of here. And I went into

00:06:14.500 landscaping and I did pizza delivery and I did retail sale and I bounced around from place to place to

00:06:19.740 place because I'd remember specifically that college was frankly just a miserable experience

00:06:25.340 for me. Wow. Well, I'm sorry about that. That's okay. We're doing okay now though.

00:06:29.640 Yeah. It seems like you are. You had the strength to find yourself as opposed to just coloring in the

00:06:35.740 box. Yeah, I think that's true. And I've been fortunate enough to have some really good experiences

00:06:39.900 that have allowed me to do that and been surrounded by other good men who have, and women, frankly,

00:06:44.220 who have helped me see a different way of learning and exposing myself to new information and pursuing

00:06:50.080 a passion, which is something you talk a lot about when it comes to men. Yes.

00:06:54.060 Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the passion component of this because I think that's

00:06:57.880 one of the underlying premises in your book is that men are lacking real purpose, I think is the term

00:07:04.260 you use. And do you find that to be the case? Is that the biggest challenge that you see among men?

00:07:09.080 It's a combination of two things, the purpose void and the dad void combined. In those two arenas,

00:07:17.080 when you put them together, that's where the boy crisis exists. So for example, in the old days, 0.63

00:07:21.980 we had natural senses of purpose. The culture said, you are a boy, you become a warrior and,

00:07:28.220 or you become a soul breadwinner. If you did one or both of those, you were considered growable into a

00:07:33.700 man. You got a lot of what I call social bribes to do those things. You were told that Uncle Sam

00:07:40.560 wants you and their dad and mom would be proud of you if you had a military uniform on. And

00:07:45.180 especially if you were in the elite, the more dangerous your job was, the more disposable you

00:07:50.320 were, the more you were valued. You were very disposable as a Navy SEAL, even more so than in the

00:07:57.280 regular military, but you were then given elite status, which then bribed you to be disposable.

00:08:03.820 And similarly in the workplace, if you're a working class man and you didn't have a lot of education,

00:08:10.080 the emphasis was for you to use your hands and to be in the death profession would give you what I

00:08:15.360 call the death profession bonus. So you would enter one of the hazardous professions that into the logging

00:08:21.120 industry or into the trucking industry or into the welding industry at the top of a bridge at which

00:08:26.500 you are at risk for your life, but as a coal miner, et cetera. But on the other hand, you could earn a

00:08:32.880 living for your family. And so you were told if you figured out a way of being a sole breadwinner

00:08:38.680 at work, you would be possible father material. A woman would feel that her family would approve of 0.86

00:08:45.380 her falling in love with you and having children with you. What a woman was warned to not want is a 1.00

00:08:51.420 lovely, sweet man who was reading the boy crisis on the unemployment line.

00:08:56.800 Has that changed though? I mean, have women really at a fundamental and foundational level 0.97

00:09:01.220 changed what they're looking for in men, or are they still looking for some of those characteristics?

00:09:06.100 They're still looking for those characteristics if they are planning to have children. Everything

00:09:10.520 turns with children. So for example, the pay gap, we always hear the gender pay gap between men and

00:09:15.280 women. That gender pay gap is assumed to be a male-female gap, but it's actually not a male-female gap. 0.93

00:09:21.420 It's a father-mother gap. When a man and woman become parents, the woman is statistically speaking 0.94

00:09:29.020 far more likely to choose among three things, either work full-time, children full-time,

00:09:34.260 or do some combination of both. So even if she works full-time, she's likely to cut her hours back

00:09:39.700 so she has flexibility with the children. And 40% of women, when they have children, don't work full-time, 1.00

00:09:45.900 even part-time. They stay at home, 40% work full-time and 20% work part-time. And so the average

00:09:53.540 pay of the average mother goes down considerably. And I imagine the type of work too that they choose, 0.80

00:09:59.840 even if they are working full-time, I imagine is maybe not so focused or career advancement

00:10:06.680 centric and allows a lot more flexibility and scheduling and time to be with children and those

00:10:12.300 sorts of considerations as well. That's exactly right. It's fathers then that really focus on,

00:10:17.780 it used to be that the mother and father, before they had children, they would share the responsibilities

00:10:22.820 of a small home, but that the child comes, she cuts back her work or completely stops her work

00:10:28.080 outside the home. She's working enormously with the child. And he then has to more than double up

00:10:33.800 because he's not only having to provide for himself, but also mostly for her. And then also for the

00:10:39.080 child, then also for any emergencies that might come up. So he's got to have more of a safety net

00:10:45.100 there for them. He becomes focused on that. Now let's get back to purpose void. Purpose void is

00:10:50.460 he doesn't now have an identity as a man by being a worrier or a sole breadwinner. If he's working in a

00:10:58.340 middle-class job or an executive type of job, he is oftentimes when the child comes feeling like,

00:11:05.820 okay, I'm now regional manager in charge of such and such, selling such and such product. I need

00:11:11.620 more money. I better accept that offer to become a national manager. I'm now a teacher and I love my

00:11:17.240 passion. My passion is teaching. I'll get more money as a vice principal or a principal. So I'd better give

00:11:24.140 up my passion and do what I need to do. The feminist movement has been completely, this is a complete

00:11:29.880 misunderstanding. They've felt that men, because they earn more, have more power and more privilege

00:11:36.340 when in fact they have more obligation and more expectation. And the men who earn more are fulfilling

00:11:42.060 that obligation and that expectation. That's the male form of discrimination against men. It is not

00:11:48.540 the discrimination for men. Men as fathers earn significantly more because they have an expectation

00:11:55.100 to do so. Okay. So now we have a little bit less of that expectation. So the good news is there's

00:12:02.640 more flexibility. The bad news is that there is a purpose for it. If I can interject real quick,

00:12:08.300 I mean, from my experience, and maybe this is what you're getting into, is anytime that I've added

00:12:12.320 obligations, expectations, and responsibilities in my life, as long as those things are moral, ethical,

00:12:18.200 and legal, I have added a sense of purpose to my life. I don't know if this is exclusive to men or

00:12:25.480 generally typical of men, but I believe that I personally and a lot of men that I work with thrive

00:12:30.440 on additional and added responsibility and weight on our shoulders. Evidence for that is that boys who

00:12:36.800 are having problems are very helped by mentors. They're helped even more by becoming a mentor. As soon as a

00:12:45.200 boy is encouraged or becoming like a Boy Scout and going from Boy Scout earning merit badges to becoming

00:12:51.560 patrol leader or a Boy Scout earning enough merit badges to become starlight for eagle, and then other

00:12:57.380 people look up to them and they have an image to fulfill and they feel like doing something purposeful

00:13:03.180 is really important. But now here is the big issue. The boy crisis is created by the combination of the 0.82

00:13:09.320 purpose void plus the dad void. So the boy crisis exists largely among two groups of boys. Boys that are

00:13:19.680 the children of parents of divorce in which the boy does not have consistent and dependable involvement

00:13:27.720 of a significant nature with his dad after divorce. So if the mom is the primary parent, the boy doesn't

00:13:35.640 have a role model of his same sex that he can look up to, to take him from the greater purpose void 0.99

00:13:43.740 through to saying, here's what I need to do for you, son. I need to work with you to help you discover

00:13:50.900 what is the unique parts of you, what fulfills you, what motivates you, and at the same time to prepare

00:13:58.460 you for obligations. So if you say that just being a full-time babysitter to the people in the

00:14:04.880 neighborhood is what you love to do, I've got to help you make translate that into not just being

00:14:11.240 a babysitter, but maybe being a teacher, maybe being a caretaker that pays. So you're talking about

00:14:17.500 the opportunity to provide, turning that interest into a provisional opportunity so that you can be

00:14:25.380 a more effective husband, father, and so on. Am I understanding that correctly? Exactly. Okay. And so the

00:14:32.240 father is one of the reasons that girls are doing so much better than boys are. Girls being raised in 1.00

00:14:37.160 single-parent homes are being raised in single mom homes for the most part. So they have a same-sex 0.96

00:14:43.380 role model to help guide them through their uniqueness. Plus they have a cultural message.

00:14:50.340 And the cultural message to girls as a result of the feminist movement is you can be anything you want 1.00

00:14:55.200 to be. You can raise children, you can raise money, you can do some combination of both,

00:14:59.380 you can do all raise money and for a while, and then raise children completely for a while. You can

00:15:04.820 do it sequentially. You can do it in any way, shape, and form, and you will be respected as a

00:15:10.760 girl, woman. And I, as your mom, here's what I did that was right. Here's what I did that was wrong.

00:15:16.680 Here's what I would change. Here's what you've seen me do. And so the girl has this constant feedback

00:15:21.380 from her gender. What's the cultural message that boys are receiving? If girls are receiving the message

00:15:26.380 that you can be anything and do whatever you want in whatever order or whatever it may be,

00:15:30.680 what do you see as the cultural message that, that our young boys are receiving?

00:15:34.260 Boys receive a fair amount of that message until they become a dad. And if they become a dad,

00:15:40.600 they learn that their three options are not raise children, raise money, do some combination of both,

00:15:45.720 but rather they have three options too, which is raise money, raise money, or raise money,

00:15:50.520 you know, or work full time, work full time, work full time. Or if they're a working class man,

00:15:54.500 maybe work two jobs. If they're a middle-class man, just increase the intensity of the number 0.91

00:15:59.600 of hours they put into and the responsibilities they take on at a middle-class job.

00:16:04.520 Do you see any statistics about the men who, for example, stay at home while the women enters the 0.95

00:16:10.300 workforce as far as fulfillment, purpose, and even just a general sense of satisfaction? Is it higher?

00:16:17.480 Is it lower? Is it the equivalent? Yes. I'm curious.

00:16:20.500 The children that have stay at home dads, if that does not result in a divorce,

00:16:26.020 and I'll get to that issue in a moment, then the children do extremely well. So that's the good

00:16:31.580 news. Both boys and girls do well? Boys and girls do very well. Boys and girls that have a significant

00:16:37.300 amount of father involvement, the girls, they do better in 70 different areas than I was able 0.84

00:16:42.980 to document in the process of researching the boy crisis. Most of the areas are the same,

00:16:48.020 but they have two distinctions. One is the boys are more likely to feel the negative consequences

00:16:54.340 more intensely. So I'll be really technical here, but it's for a minute's worth of technical

00:17:00.720 absorption, you'll really get the power of this. The single most important thing that one has

00:17:06.580 that is a predictor when you're young of how long you will live are something called telomeres,

00:17:12.540 T-E-L-O-M-E-R-S. They're contained in your cells. Telomeres are long. Your genes will easily reproduce 1.00

00:17:21.200 genes that prevent cancer, that prevent disease, and so on. If your telomeres are short, that predicts

00:17:27.460 exactly the opposite, a shorter life expectancy. By the age of nine, if you have 14% shorter telomeres,

00:17:33.920 that means your life expectancy will be approximately 14% shorter. By the age of nine,

00:17:40.060 boys and girls, on average, that have significant father involvement have 14% longer telomeres than

00:17:51.800 boys and girls who do not have significant father involvement by the age of nine.

00:17:57.020 Is that due to father involvement, or does that just happen to be correlating data, or is that

00:18:02.200 a consequence, if you will, of having a father involved, meaning that's actually influencing the

00:18:08.160 telomeres? There's enough data to suggest that it's most likely due to lack of father involvement or

00:18:14.320 conversely to father involvement. Interesting. Just discovered recently, so not every cross test has

00:18:19.640 been done on that, but 14% shorter for boys and girls on average, but boys have 40% shorter telomeres

00:18:29.120 than their sisters already by the age of nine. Everything else being equal.

00:18:34.160 Everything else being equal. So you can get a sense of the power of lack of father involvement

00:18:40.560 on both our sons and our daughters, but the proportionally greater power of the lack of

00:18:47.020 father involvement of 40% more. More significant for boys.

00:18:52.840 Exactly, for boys. And in almost every area that I studied, like in all of the 70 areas where boys do

00:19:00.400 worse than girls do when they have lack of father involvement, all 70 of those areas where I was 0.95

00:19:05.120 able to get good measures of both girls' problems and boys' problems, I found that the girls in most

00:19:11.360 of those areas did worse, but not as badly as the boys did. The areas where the girls did even worse

00:19:18.480 than the boys were areas like in their adjustment to sexuality with boys. So for example, the lack of

00:19:26.140 comfort with a male by not having a father in the house often leads to girls not knowing how to

00:19:34.100 please a male in a way other than being sexual with them. They'll be sexual before they're really 0.65

00:19:40.760 ready to be sexual for fear of losing the boy to some other girl who will be sexual with him.

00:19:45.840 They don't have other resources to say that, you know, there's something valuable about me other than 0.98

00:19:51.020 my being willing to be sexual with you. 0.95

00:19:52.740 That's interesting because, and I know this might come across as weird, but I see my daughter

00:19:57.280 in that she has an attraction to me. I don't mean a sexual, that's not what I'm talking about.

00:20:03.800 For some reason, she is infatuated by me as a male presence. And I think what I see in my relationship

00:20:10.540 with her is that we can have a relationship outside of what you're saying, these sexual type feelings

00:20:16.920 or whatever they may be in that she recognized she is enough, that she is adequate without having

00:20:24.740 to be sexual.

00:20:27.380 Insofar as we know, that is exactly right. She can play with you. She can, you can do roughhousing 0.99

00:20:33.120 with her.

00:20:33.740 Sure.

00:20:34.280 And, you know, you can be physically close to her without that being a sign that you're going to

00:20:39.160 have to be physical with her in a sexual way.

00:20:41.900 Sure.

00:20:42.440 And so that creates a trust and a very deep experience for girls that male does not mean

00:20:48.920 sexual automatically, that my dad could play with me, could roughhouse, could allow me to

00:20:54.020 jump off the couch onto his back. And if I did the right thing with, especially if I was doing

00:20:58.520 that with my brother and that together we did the right thing, we could get dad underneath us

00:21:02.380 and we could, you know, we could win the wrestling match.

00:21:04.480 Right.

00:21:04.740 Right. And that's something that traditionally women, and I'm talking specifically about 1.00

00:21:10.220 mother figures, just aren't going to do. And you talk about the distinctions and some

00:21:13.900 of the things that dads add to the equation that mothers traditionally do not. And one

00:21:19.060 of them is roughhouse.

00:21:20.340 And first of all, let me make it clear that mothers bring a lot to the family table.

00:21:25.180 Almost all of us know that, you know, the mothers tend to be devoted. They tend to be

00:21:29.380 unconditionally loving. They tend to be more nurturing. They tend to sort of be protective.

00:21:33.560 And all of those things are important things to build a deep sense of security within the child.

00:21:39.760 However, it isn't nearly as much security as when it's combined with what I call the

00:21:45.360 checks and balances of a father involvement. So, for example, we go back to the example before,

00:21:51.020 and we have in the family, let's say, James, Brad, and Krista. And James is the older boy,

00:21:56.980 maybe eight or so, and Brad is maybe six, and Krista is maybe four. And they're roughhousing.

00:22:02.220 And the first thing that happens is that mom's looking over and going, oh, my God,

00:22:06.820 it feels like I just have one more child to monitor called the dad.

00:22:10.600 Sure, yeah, stressful for her.

00:22:12.360 Like, you know, and she's like gritting her teeth. On the other hand, she's saying,

00:22:15.320 but the kids are having fun. I don't want to stop them from having fun. I don't want to be the

00:22:18.580 spoiled sport. On the other hand, I'm quite sure, look at how close they're coming to hitting each

00:22:22.960 other's heads. I don't like the fact that Brad is, you know, bullying Krista, and she's having all

00:22:27.880 these worries. And should I stop this? Or should I not? And so finally, she decides, no, I'll let

00:22:33.000 it go. But I'm absolutely sure in my mind's eye, that sooner or later, they're going to hurt

00:22:37.280 themselves. Is she right? About 99% of the time, she's right. They have a collision, or somebody

00:22:42.780 feels like they're pushed away, and that one of the kids starts crying. And then she says to herself,

00:22:48.040 two things. Oh, my God, I am right. I saw that I foresaw that I should have been proactive in

00:22:54.760 protecting them from having to cry. You know, I shouldn't have waited so long. So she feels

00:22:59.460 guilty that she waited so long to interfere. But if she does interfere, she feels guilty for

00:23:04.080 interfering. What happens, though, is that dads don't read books like The Boy Crisis or any other

00:23:11.840 books on parenting or subscribe to Parenting Magazine. And they don't know the data on why that

00:23:18.200 roughhousing is so important. So here's what dads don't say. They first don't say that there's a

00:23:24.560 high correlation between roughhousing and the development of empathy. Empathy and roughhousing?

00:23:32.300 Yeah, it seems like it's counterintuitive.

00:23:33.900 Like they don't even seem connected, except maybe disconnected, connected inversely.

00:23:38.580 Right.

00:23:39.140 We break down roughhousing. And, you know, as the older boy, Jim, I think I said, is jumping onto the

00:23:45.100 back of dad and wants to be the one to be able to turn that over. And he's pushing

00:23:49.860 Brad or Krista away. Dad sort of lets that happen to some degree. And then at some point when it seems

00:23:55.860 to be getting a little bit too much, dad says, you know, Brad, you can't do that with Krista. You

00:24:00.940 can't do that with your brother. Or the two start having a fight. Nope, you had a fight. We're going

00:24:06.500 to stop roughhousing. So dad is doing two things here. First, he's creating a deep bond via the

00:24:13.340 roughhousing. Then he's using that bond to extract boundaries. And he's saying, the pleasure you're

00:24:21.840 having, the fun you're having, the roller coaster that I'm creating for you, a lot of excitement

00:24:26.600 combined with safety. That's what dads provide. They're like a roller coaster. They combine

00:24:31.060 excitement plus a reasonable amount of safety. That roller coaster ride is going to stop if you

00:24:36.820 don't think of your sister's and brother's feelings, especially if you're the older one.

00:24:41.000 And if you get into a fight, even if you're the older and the younger one,

00:24:44.880 the roughhousing is going to stop. So the kids learn something that they cannot learn from a

00:24:49.840 lecture. They learn from experience. When roughhousing goes too far, when not being sensitive to the

00:24:57.240 sister's needs, the brother's needs is going to cost you for not being sensitive. You can always tell

00:25:03.660 this in another child too. For example, if we have a child come over to my house, let's say my oldest

00:25:09.320 son's friend and they're roughhousing or doing their thing and they don't know the line. It's

00:25:13.900 very easy to come to the conclusion that they don't roughhouse in their house or they don't know

00:25:20.140 those social boundaries and limits that are not to be crossed because they never had exposure to this.

00:25:26.880 Everyone who is listening to that, if you have any doubts about what we're talking about,

00:25:32.120 tune into what Ryan just said. That's exactly a real good test. Bring over a child that doesn't

00:25:37.680 have father involvement, that doesn't have roughhousing, and you will see that deficiency

00:25:42.340 in there. And so that's a very good litmus test for the average family.

00:25:46.080 Yeah. One of the other things that I was fascinated that you talked about is that

00:25:49.040 a dad, when he's roughhousing, is establishing and developing and maybe even growing to a degree

00:25:55.320 emotional, mental, and physical resilience. My wife always says, she says, you never stop until

00:26:01.660 one of the kids is crying. And I've thought to myself, that's true. That is true. Why is that

00:26:07.380 the case? And then as I was reading your book and going through the information, I wouldn't stop before

00:26:12.040 he's crying because I haven't pushed the limit. I don't know how far he can go. And I haven't expanded

00:26:17.000 his capacity for more pain or discomfort or something that just isn't that enjoyable to him.

00:26:24.260 Maybe that's subconscious, but that was interesting reading that and learning a little bit more about that.

00:26:28.500 Yeah. Absolutely. And you not only, so mom has to know, and dad brings to the parenting process

00:26:34.060 is giving the children, not a lecture, but an experience of what empathy is about and when it

00:26:42.020 needs to be applied and when it doesn't need to be applied. And then dad will often say, if you do that

00:26:47.580 again, or if you go over the boundaries again, and that leads to crying or fighting or not being

00:26:52.900 sensitive to each other, that's the warning. And then dad does what? He goes after the crying,

00:26:58.000 he goes back and he returns to the rough housing. But then if they go back and they cry again,

00:27:04.020 or they hurt each other again. So dad says to the children, okay, we're going to stop the rough

00:27:08.400 housing. And then he tells them and clarifies what they've done that's too much and what they can't do

00:27:13.800 again and how they have to have empathy for each other, not by theory, but actual in practice.

00:27:19.440 Sure.

00:27:19.640 So then he returns to the rough housing and gives them a chance to practice it and do it better. 0.95

00:27:27.240 Practicing it and doing it better helps the children develop what psychologists call

00:27:31.640 emotional intelligence under fire. Emotional intelligence under fire is applicable in that,

00:27:38.260 let's say a husband and wife get into a fight. The people who don't have emotional intelligence 0.79

00:27:42.580 under fire might let that fight escalate, escalate, and escalate. The ones that do have emotional

00:27:48.120 intelligence under fire realize the situation is getting out of hand and have the tools to stop

00:27:53.320 it and to let it go down and to not get carried away. This is what you're training your child to do.

00:27:59.140 And this is why empathy and emotional intelligence under fire is developed through rough housing in

00:28:04.440 part and rough housing combined with boundary enforcement. Now, something else that's happening

00:28:08.600 here is that the bond between the father and the children that's created by the excitement of

00:28:14.760 rough housing allows the children to be upset when the father says, no more hurting each other in this

00:28:22.140 type of way, but not to be rebellious because the children want more rough housing with dad.

00:28:27.880 Right. They want the reward, the benefit of rough housing. 0.63

00:28:30.480 They want the reward and they feel the bond and they feel he's somebody that's on their team.

00:28:35.560 It is not a parent saying rules, child saying, am I old enough to rebel against those rules?

00:28:41.980 So the rebellion process doesn't start nearly as much with the dads. And moms see this in this

00:28:47.460 type of respect. Moms notice after a while, the dad will say, stop this. And the children will stop

00:28:54.020 this. And the mom goes, darn, every time I say stop this, the kids don't stop. I have to repeat, 0.99

00:29:02.300 repeat, and repeat. Because what mom has taught the kids is that when they don't obey her,

00:29:08.940 she will repeat, she will not end the reward process of the rough housing or whatever the

00:29:15.360 reward process is. She'll try to persuade them to behave. But the kids in their excitement,

00:29:21.880 the punishment of her repeating herself is not nearly as great as getting carried away during,

00:29:27.760 when they're excited. So mom keeps having to repeat. And she looks at the dad doing the thing

00:29:32.820 gets really frustrated as the light word and angry. That is the bad word. Like, you know,

00:29:40.280 why do they just pay attention to dad and not me? What I've just explained, and if I haven't explained

00:29:45.860 it well, it's explained, I hope a lot more clearly in the boy crisis, he's willing to end that process

00:29:51.280 if the children don't obey. Boundary enforcement is the single most important parenting skill that dad

00:29:58.760 brings to the parenting table. The child learns that I have to focus on being empathetic toward

00:30:05.240 my sister or brother. I have to focus on not getting carried away. I have to focus on doing

00:30:10.420 what I need to do. Dads and moms tend to set boundaries the same way. You can't have your 0.63

00:30:15.580 ice cream until you finish your peas, let's say. And the children tend to test boundaries the same way.

00:30:20.600 They try to have a couple more peas and then say, you know, can I have my ice cream now?

00:30:25.220 Sure. And then mom tends to feel like, you know, I'm not going to get into a big argument over a

00:30:30.540 few peas. Okay, sweetie, I'll tell you what. Have a couple more peas and then you can have your ice

00:30:34.660 cream. And dad tends to look at the kids and say, excuse me, we have a deal here. And the deal is

00:30:39.100 that you can't have your ice cream until you finish your peas. You know the deal. I know the deal. You

00:30:43.920 know that I know the deal. The children might say, oh, you're so mean. Mom, let's have peas much

00:30:48.140 sooner. And dad will go, you can continue crying. No ice cream tomorrow night either.

00:30:52.220 The threat of me being mean doesn't really impact me when it comes to the arrangement that we had

00:30:57.040 worked out for sure. I see. And does this ring true for you?

00:31:02.520 Oh, a hundred percent. I mean, you're talking about our dinner table. So this is exactly right.

00:31:07.220 And so what moms need to know is that that boundary enforcement leads to a much greater likelihood 1.00

00:31:14.480 to not have ADHD. That is, children raised predominantly by fathers, only 15% of them

00:31:21.060 have symptoms of ADHD. Children raised predominantly by mothers, 30% have ADHD. When the father

00:31:28.500 metaphorically requires the son and daughter to finish the peas, they're requiring the son and daughter

00:31:36.180 to have attention focus on doing what they need to do.

00:31:40.100 And what they don't like to do. And what they don't like to do in order to get what they like

00:31:44.420 to do, which is called postponed gratification, of course. Which I think is a huge indicator,

00:31:49.160 if I understand the studies correctly, delaying in gratification is a huge indicator of success

00:31:55.240 ultimately in life. That is correct. Postponed gratification, we have known and seen since

00:31:59.740 the days of Michelle doing the marshmallow experiments at Stanford. That is the single biggest predictor

00:32:07.160 of having a successful life. Not just success in terms of money. It's a success in terms of happiness

00:32:14.640 and fulfillment because the boy, let's say, or the girl who doesn't have that postponed gratification

00:32:20.060 goes to school. Maybe he's naturally tall and he has an aspiration to be a basketball player,

00:32:26.000 NBA player, let's say. Or he's learned to play the piano but not well, but he wants to make a career

00:32:31.840 out of acting or piano. Or he just wants to do his homework and finish it. No matter what his goal is,

00:32:37.460 without postponed gratification, he gets carried away by being distracted by, oh, somebody's texting

00:32:42.900 him. I'll just take care of this text for a minute. There's a new video game my friend wants to play.

00:32:46.820 I won't tell him or her no. I'll just play the video game with him. Now I'll get back to my homework

00:32:50.600 in a little while. So without postponed gratification, he tends to fail in school among both subjects

00:32:56.940 and activities. Therefore, he doesn't have the respect of other male peers, of girlfriends and

00:33:04.300 future girlfriends. He doesn't have the good grades from teachers. He doesn't have the pride of the

00:33:09.560 parents that he's gotten good grades or has done really well in the basketball team. He begins to

00:33:15.320 then internalize that lack of respect and appreciation for him and begins to feel like he's a loser.

00:33:21.820 But on the other hand, in a video game, he notices he has control over things and he can do well. And

00:33:27.680 so he might take advantage of that. But then he gets addicted to the video games because it's the

00:33:32.140 only source that rewards the immediate gratification and his skill set. And then he begins to realize

00:33:38.220 that girls are not interested in him nearly as much as they're interested in the football team or

00:33:42.880 there's somebody else that has a lot of postponed gratification. So he begins to turn to porn. And porn

00:33:49.040 damages his brain in about four different ways that are described in the boy crisis. He's so needy of 0.81

00:33:54.560 it because what is pornography for a boy? Pornography is access to a variety of attractive women without 0.76

00:34:02.960 fear of rejection. And without the effort. And without the effort and at the price he can afford.

00:34:10.640 Men, just a quick time out to talk with you about something I haven't talked about for a while. That

00:34:14.800 is our exclusive brotherhood, the Iron Council. The Iron Council is a, again, a brotherhood of

00:34:20.720 nearly 430 men, all banding together, working together, having some serious discussions and

00:34:27.040 conversations, and most importantly, taking the action towards our goals, our ambitions, and our

00:34:33.500 desires. I've noticed that one of the things that has helped me on my own personal journey to become a

00:34:38.460 better father and husband and business owner is accountability. And I think that's one of the best

00:34:43.800 benefits of the Iron Council is that when you band with us, you're banding with other men who want

00:34:48.860 to achieve, who are working towards achieving measures of success in their lives. And they want

00:34:53.720 to help you do the same. And through the conversations and the calls and the assignments and the challenges

00:34:59.780 that we have going on, there is so much accountability built into this. And I don't want to say force you to

00:35:05.920 change, but in a way, hold your feet to the fire a little bit. And I know that's what I needed. And I know

00:35:11.020 there's a lot of men out there who need that as well. So when you join us, you will get the

00:35:14.540 accountability and everything else I just mentioned will help you identify your goals and your

00:35:18.960 objectives and the things that you want to accomplish in your life. You can learn more

00:35:23.220 and lock in your spot at order of man.com slash iron council. Again, that's order of man.com slash

00:35:30.040 iron council. So make sure you go check it out, get registered, lock in your spot until then we'll get

00:35:34.840 back to my conversation with Dr. Farrell. This actually is really indicative to me when I hear

00:35:41.500 you talk about this of the rising incel movement, which I'm sure you're familiar with. And as you

00:35:46.700 talk about this, this actually sounds like potentially it could lead to somebody being

00:35:52.840 involved in, in this, what is it? Voluntary celibate movement. Is that correct?

00:35:58.140 That's correct. Involuntary celibate is what incel stands for. And if you just think of just

00:36:03.700 everything I've said, so let's take the next layer of that. The boy feels like he can't get

00:36:08.640 along with girls very well. Girls are not attracted to him. He's very attracted to girls. So from his

00:36:14.700 perspective, every girl in the class that he's attracted to, which is usually about 50% of them

00:36:19.920 that he would be open to being sexual with every one of them from his perspective is rejecting him.

00:36:25.660 Right.

00:36:26.080 Or he anticipates the rejection so much he doesn't even ask, but he's being told by mom and dad that

00:36:31.800 he's a sweet boy and he's a sensitive boy and he's a lovely boy and he's very bright and he has a lot

00:36:38.480 of things to offer. But the girls don't seem to respect that or notice that or admire that 0.96

00:36:44.320 or respond to that. And so finally, one girl does come over to his house, but what to do with girls

00:36:51.240 is a lot of what he sees in porn. And so maybe he should come over the girl's face like they do in

00:36:57.580 porn, or he should ask her to have anal sex like they do in porn. And the girl is like, 1.00

00:37:03.300 yeah, that was just a terrible experience. And the only girl that is okay with it is the one that 1.00

00:37:08.860 feels that she needs to do it because she'll lose the boy anyway.

00:37:12.720 And an indicator of that to what you were saying earlier is maybe she didn't have the father figure

00:37:16.700 in her life that produced a healthy relationship with the opposite sex.

00:37:21.820 Yes, exactly. And so she then feels that she has to do that. So he gets involved either with girls

00:37:28.540 that have severe emotional problems or the girl just goes, I'm out of here.

00:37:33.460 Right.

00:37:33.740 So either way creates a really negative experience for him with girls, which only convinces him that

00:37:41.180 all that girls don't really want that sweetness and sensitivity that his mother said he was so

00:37:46.560 wonderful at. Well, who are they out with? The captain of the football team. And when that captain of the

00:37:51.600 football team, is he being as sensitive as I am? No, he's not. And what are they responding to?

00:37:57.280 They're responding to that bastard. And they say they want sensitivity, says he, but it's obvious 1.00

00:38:02.580 that they don't because look who they're going out with. Or they're going out with some guy with a

00:38:07.320 leather jacket and a motorcycle. And that's also not him. And so that's where the incel comes from.

00:38:13.920 Now, incel is not the worst case scenario. The worst case scenario is that he becomes so depressed

00:38:19.020 and down on himself that he eventually commits suicide. Or the super worst case scenario is that

00:38:27.240 the great majority of mass shooters are boys with minimal or no father involvement. Or in more

00:38:35.180 exceptional cases, boys who do have father involvement, but whose father is not good at

00:38:43.940 enforcing boundaries. There's no father's role in the family at all. So Omar Mateen's father,

00:38:50.700 who did one of the major mass shootings in Orlando, his father was present. But every time Omar got into

00:38:59.400 trouble, he was always defending Omar. So Omar rescuing him. That is one of the functions of normally

00:39:07.400 speaking. The difference between mothering and fathering is that the boy gets rescued and the mother

00:39:12.700 immediately appears at the jailhouse and says, I know my son never does things like this. You know,

00:39:17.840 please let him go because it'd be very traumatizing for him to be in prison for the night. Dad will

00:39:22.200 tend to say, okay, he did this and he got arrested. Thank you. This is exactly probably what he needs.

00:39:28.260 Keep him in jail overnight. Right. We'll pick him up in the morning.

00:39:31.000 We'll pick him up in the morning. I think a night in jail will probably do him good.

00:39:34.420 Sure.

00:39:35.120 That's a typical difference in male-female parenting. Omar Mateen's father was just like the female is. So 0.98

00:39:42.040 because you're a father doesn't necessarily mean you're going to behave in dad style. Because

00:39:47.880 you're a mother, it doesn't mean you're limited to mom style. You can do the boundary enforcement 0.57

00:39:53.640 as a mom. You can do the roughhousing. It's just, these are just the tendencies.

00:39:57.500 Let me ask you this. Is there any data or research from my experience and the outside looking in

00:40:04.820 daughters without fathers in their lives don't become violent? They don't shoot up schools. 1.00

00:40:12.580 They aren't participating in this behavior. Is it just because the way that we as men are?

00:40:18.920 Is it our physiology? Is it the hormones of testosterone that is causing this reaction to

00:40:24.780 a lack of a father figure?

00:40:26.000 Yes. Testosterone without dads means that you have this enormous force that gets channeled

00:40:34.640 in a way that is not helping it be channeled well.

00:40:40.540 So this is where the idea of quote unquote toxic masculinity would come from.

00:40:44.400 That's right. And this is toxic masculinity. I mean, any boy that shoots up a school is

00:40:48.880 demonstrating the toxic masculinity. So toxic masculinity is testosterone not well channeled.

00:40:55.720 Well channels primary definition is without the boundary enforcement, without the consequences

00:41:02.200 being known with the father or a mother that calls the jail and says, oh, my son can't possibly

00:41:07.860 spend the night in prison. You have to rescue him. He's such a sweet and lovely boy. He's going to be

00:41:12.640 without knowing where the boundaries are. And he usually doesn't get to that place if he's had

00:41:17.260 good boundaries. And then of course you have, you know, with boys, you know, people often say that,

00:41:22.360 you know, the school shootings are a result of family values of access to guns and, you know,

00:41:27.180 girls have the same access to guns, the same family values, the same violence in the media. 1.00

00:41:30.960 They don't do the shootings. Right.

00:41:32.680 But on the other hand, the availability of guns, the AR-15s and the assault rifles and so on,

00:41:39.020 make the problems that boys have much more likely to leave a boy with an option for getting attention

00:41:48.280 for a few minutes and teaching those people who didn't pay attention to him a lesson by shooting

00:41:54.840 up all the people in the school that ignored him, that made him invisible, that didn't think he had

00:42:02.400 any feelings that were worth hearing. Well, I'll shoot up 15, 20 of them, especially so-and-so and 0.99

00:42:06.940 so-and-so. And then they'll ask the question, what were we not paying attention to? For the first time 0.98

00:42:12.740 in their life, I'll teach them to think about me. And that's all a natural outcome. Of course,

00:42:17.400 the availability of guns is making that toxicity much more possible to be expanded to enormous

00:42:24.180 lengths. The only good news about the AR-15s and the killings is that they're making us realize

00:42:30.460 that something is challenging about boys and maybe we need to pay attention to the underlying problem.

00:42:36.800 I think it's important too that we make this distinction because when we talk about toxic

00:42:41.100 masculinity, I mean, you're talking about a term that, yes, I can definitely see where it's coming 1.00

00:42:45.020 from. The problem that I see in society, and I think a lot of this comes from some third wave type 1.00

00:42:50.200 feminism, is that they've turned the term toxic masculinity to equate masculine and toxicity when 1.00

00:42:59.540 that's certainly not the case at all. Masculinity in and of itself is not toxic. I think it's really,

00:43:05.480 really important that people understand that those two terms are not synonymous.

00:43:11.460 Yes, yes. Masculinity and femininity both have a shadow side of toxicity, but masculinity and both 0.97

00:43:19.580 and femininity also have extraordinary plus sides as well. And so feminism has turned even some of the 1.00

00:43:26.840 positive aspects of well-channeled masculinity into toxicity. So for example, in almost every college

00:43:34.840 today, there is a tendency for women and feminists, especially in the university to say, 0.99

00:43:41.140 you're male, you have male privilege, you have male power, proof, all the CEOs and the-

00:43:47.440 Right. Look around at the metrics, right.

00:43:49.360 Yes, are males and mostly white males. We now are trying to speak up. So let us speak up. And this is time

00:43:56.980 for us to speak up, for you to shut up. Oh, wait a minute. I have a perspective that I'd like to offer 0.98

00:44:01.980 on that. Aha, that's mansplaining. But what about we men who earn more money? Weren't we making

00:44:08.660 contributions to the society that we believe we were expected to make as part of our male role?

00:44:14.440 Well, not only that, the markets have dictated that. One of the things I hear all the time is

00:44:18.480 entertainers and athletes get paid too much. Well, no, they get exactly paid what they're worth in a

00:44:23.700 free market society because we have dictated what we're willing to pay those athletes and those

00:44:28.460 entertainers. What feminists have missed is by saying that the boys and men who do earn a lot 1.00

00:44:35.160 of money, they have power. And the boys and men who don't earn a lot of money, they don't even pay

00:44:41.400 attention to them. I remember riding in a sort of like a town car type of thing with Gloria Steinem years

00:44:46.980 ago to a show we were doing that Alan Alda was hosting in New York. We started talking about what

00:44:52.160 we're going to talk about on the show. The town car driver said, that's interesting because, you know,

00:44:57.700 do you think I drive this town car because I want more power over my family? And we sort of stopped

00:45:03.760 and I said, well, why do you drive the car? And he said, because I drive 70 hours a week and I hate

00:45:10.360 being away from my family, but I want my children not to have to be driving a town car. I want my

00:45:15.520 children to have opportunities that I didn't have. I want my wife to have a decent home in a nice

00:45:20.900 neighborhood with a good school. And so I make the sacrifice to do that. And he understood instinctively

00:45:26.800 that, you know, whether it's the coal mine or the oil rig operator, the person that travels

00:45:31.260 that became a superintendent of schools rather than a teacher, which was his passion. We understood

00:45:36.620 instinctively that earning more was part of our obligation and expectation. Earning more was part

00:45:43.760 of discrimination against men, not discrimination for men. It is not true that men earn more for the

00:45:51.940 same work. It is true that they earn more for 25 differences in their work life decisions that men 0.63

00:45:59.540 make versus women. And all of those are outlined in a book I wrote called Why Men Earn More and What 0.97

00:46:04.680 Women Can Do About It. Because any woman who wants to earn more can do so with looking at those 25 things. 1.00

00:46:10.400 If men and women got paid equally for the same work, then only women would be hired because they're much 1.00

00:46:18.500 more efficient in terms of cost and output than the man would be in that scenario. If I can pay

00:46:25.820 a man $100,000 and a woman $100,000, but the woman's going to produce more, the man's going to produce

00:46:32.180 more, naturally, I'm going to go to that avenue that's going to produce and yield a higher bottom

00:46:36.560 line for me. If you're a boss and you can pay a man $100,000 and get the same work from a woman for 1.00

00:46:42.480 $76,000, you would hire the woman for $76,000? Of course. Yes, that's a better way of explaining it. 1.00

00:46:48.380 Absolutely. It's more of the same work. But let's say you just didn't value women and you did hire 0.98

00:46:55.240 mostly men for the $100,000. You would soon go out of business in relation to people who were smart

00:47:03.940 enough to hire women for $76,000 to produce the same work. I don't know a single man who cares more 0.95

00:47:09.560 about men than the bottom line. Yes, exactly. Let's say he does care more about men than the

00:47:14.800 bottom line. He's the exception. He will soon go out of business because other people will hire more

00:47:19.900 women if that was the case. Sure. And again, this is a very tough argument to understand.

00:47:25.660 But if you really want to get into understanding the fairness and accuracy of what I'm saying,

00:47:30.340 and you have a daughter, and you want to help her understand the trade-offs of earning more or

00:47:36.340 less, or have a son who you want to help them earn more or less, almost everything you do to earn more

00:47:43.020 is a trade-off in fulfillment. That is, the fulfilling occupations almost always pay less.

00:47:52.700 When you follow your bliss, it's the money you'll miss.

00:47:56.060 And again, this is just generally speaking. I imagine that fulfillment for men,

00:48:01.420 because earning income could potentially mean and equate to fulfillment for men because of the way

00:48:06.960 that we have been conditioned to believe in the way that we operate internally. And I imagine for

00:48:11.920 women, again, generally, fulfillment is significantly different than what fulfillment for men is.

00:48:16.740 It's overlapping, but very different. And I think one of the easiest ways to understand this is

00:48:21.200 to look at women who have MBAs who start their own business, and men who have MBAs that start their

00:48:27.600 own business. And so they're both highly educated, highly motivated, but the women earn only 49% of 0.96

00:48:35.160 what the men earn. And so when you investigate that, you find that the women start their own business so 1.00

00:48:41.480 that they can have freedom, autonomy, flexibility, they can be close to home, they can do what they want

00:48:46.440 when they want it, to a greater degree. Earning money is about the fifth level, sixth level down.

00:48:53.500 Women's own answers to questionnaires as to what they're after. 0.94

00:48:57.980 Men, 76% say the number one priority was earning money. We used to think that maybe it was just the

00:49:05.480 male boss that discriminated and didn't value the woman. But we're finding now that when the woman 0.99

00:49:11.300 answers what she wants by, there's no male boss, it's her business. She earns even less than she 1.00

00:49:17.400 does in a corporation where there's more frequently a male boss. And so that gives you a sense of this

00:49:22.700 is not a world that is controlled by men to benefit men at the expense of women. And that is a larger

00:49:30.680 picture that has been presented in universities about men. So when your son enters a university and he

00:49:37.980 says, and he wants to speak up, he's often like put in this box of you're part of the male privilege

00:49:44.560 group. Right. You're part of the problem. You don't get to have a say. And if you do speak up,

00:49:50.180 you're mansplaining and you're not giving women a chance to succeed. If you are beginning to take 0.82

00:49:55.900 sexual initiatives in 26 states, there is affirmative consent laws, which tell your college son that if he

00:50:03.620 reaches out toward a woman who's already said yes to a date and he holds her hand without asking for

00:50:08.760 permission, she can sue him for sexual harassment because she did not give him an affirmative consent

00:50:17.240 that if she didn't say yes, you can hold my hand with that one action. And that he must repeat that

00:50:24.140 request at every stage of greater intimacy, like a kiss on the cheek, kiss on the lips, kiss on the...

00:50:29.420 Did you say in 26 states? 26 states. Some version of that is the law. One of the strictest laws is

00:50:36.000 right here in California where I'm from. And so the boy is now on the one hand, fearful of the

00:50:41.600 combination of that and the hashtag me too and becoming part of the predator list. Right.

00:50:46.560 On the other hand, if he's at all of a college student who does his homework, he realizes that the

00:50:52.940 best-selling movie of all time for women is Gone with the Wind and the best-selling fiction book for

00:51:01.040 women is Fifty Shades of Grey. Interesting. Yeah. Fifty Shades of John Gray, my co-author.

00:51:08.700 And the Fifty Shades of Grey, you know, would lead him to thinking that maybe what he should ask for

00:51:13.320 for his sweet 16th birthday is a new set of whips. On the one hand, he's getting the message of

00:51:18.380 what's the message in Gone with the Wind? It's that a woman is protesting and fighting with a man. 1.00

00:51:25.060 The man sweeps her off her feet, takes her up the stairs. And what's the woman's response?

00:51:30.580 Sexual harassment? No. Mad passionate love. Right.

00:51:33.900 So let's see now. What exactly am I supposed to do? I'm a 14-year-old boy. I'm less mature than my

00:51:39.480 female counterpart. Girls have the option of taking the sexual initiative. I have the expectations 1.00

00:51:43.820 taking the sexual initiative. So sex is dirty. I'm expected to initiate the dirt. And how do I 0.99

00:51:49.980 initiate it? Do I initiate it in the Fifty Shades of Grey or Gone with the Wind model? Or do I initiate

00:51:55.420 it by asking the woman, does she want me to hold my hand? Right. And he's expected to sort these

00:52:00.900 things out with legal implications. Right. Life-altering implications at a very young age.

00:52:08.100 Exactly. And he's been engaged in porn where he sort of knows he has to keep it secret. So it teaches

00:52:12.960 him that his sex is dirty. So he feels ashamed about his greater desire for sexuality than the 0.99

00:52:18.040 girl has. All of this is haunting him. He's filled with shame and filled with not knowing what to do,

00:52:24.880 filled with expecting to be strong and the initiator, but also not being strong and not

00:52:29.320 being the initiator. And we wonder why he might be willing to withdraw and deport.

00:52:34.260 Yeah. Interesting. Well, let me ask you one other question before we move on. And I know we're

00:52:38.740 bumping up against time here for you. You've got to stop here pretty quickly. But I do want to go back to

00:52:42.920 something that we had alluded to earlier. You had mentioned the divorce rate among those fathers

00:52:49.580 who choose to stay at home rather than to enter the workforce. Can you talk to me about that briefly?

00:52:54.520 This is picking up on something you had asked me about before that I didn't complete the trajectory on.

00:52:59.420 When men stay home and do not work outside of the home, either producing money directly, 0.99

00:53:06.600 they're not working on a project that will lead to producing money. Whether or not their marriage works

00:53:11.940 depends more on whether the woman who is working and earning more money respects her husband's role

00:53:20.780 as being a primary caretaker. If she respects him, he's likely to feel fulfilled and secure and feel

00:53:28.900 like he's having a role that has purpose. And if she respects the male style of parenting and reinforces

00:53:36.080 him for that, he feels like a hero at home. But remember, he has a lot to contend with,

00:53:41.740 which is he might be a hero to you. You are his most important person to be a hero to.

00:53:48.200 But on the other hand, he's going into the park with his four or five-year-old son and daughter.

00:53:53.060 The women at the park with their other sons and daughters at four or five are in a group talking

00:53:58.360 with each other. And he feels excluded from that group. And they might even look at him suspiciously and

00:54:04.080 say, what are you doing not working? What are you doing with that girl that you have sitting in your 0.68

00:54:09.500 lap? Yeah, we naturally jump to some conclusions about that scenario when we see that.

00:54:14.980 It's like women experienced in the 1950s. If they were working full-time in construction, 1.00

00:54:20.560 or even now in construction, and people said, well, what are you doing in this occupation?

00:54:25.580 The single most important dynamic that leads to fathers or the primary caretaker either having a 0.69

00:54:33.840 good marriage or a not good marriage is the respect or lack of respect or mixed signals that he receives

00:54:41.160 from the mother. To have that respect, a mom has to know why children do so well when parented 0.63

00:54:48.080 predominantly or equally by father. Number two, be articulate about respecting what the father

00:54:54.940 is contributing. Number three, watch her own likelihood of being attracted to somebody at work

00:55:04.120 who is doing very well financially, like your husband isn't. That is as powerful for a woman 1.00

00:55:11.360 as a man meeting at work, a gorgeous young woman when he's married to a 55 to 70-year-old woman,

00:55:19.220 a gorgeous young woman who's paying attention to him. I really respect you, Mr. Weinstein.

00:55:23.180 I'm open to sleeping with you, type of thing. Yeah, I can see how that would create a lot of

00:55:28.840 additional, not that it can work, but I can see how it would create a lot of difficult

00:55:32.580 variables to contend with, for sure. Yes, and I'd say that if you're focusing on any section

00:55:39.960 of the boy crisis that I think is the most valuable contributor to keeping a marriage together,

00:55:46.500 couples communication, how to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive,

00:55:50.880 that is really the human's Achilles heel is our inability to handle personal criticism

00:55:56.360 without becoming defensive. And when your partner becomes defensive, you become more fearful about

00:56:01.820 saying the things you really are feeling and fearing to your partner. And then your partner ends up

00:56:07.120 not expressing himself or herself and feeling lonely and isolated. So focus on that part of the book

00:56:13.120 that teaches you how to do that. And then secondly, focus on the part of the boy crisis that focuses on

00:56:19.720 how to structure a family dinner night so everyone feels heard, so that there are no competing variables

00:56:27.220 like electronics at the table, how to enforce there being no electronics at the table, how to make sure

00:56:33.060 that controversial topics can be brought up without one person feeling offended or dominating the

00:56:39.960 conversation. Family dinner nights can be family dinner nightmares if they're not done well.

00:56:45.180 Yes, I've experienced both.

00:56:48.500 But yeah, I mean, I think this is indicative of a larger problem in culture too. You know,

00:56:52.900 we can't have conversations like we've had today without, and I guarantee I'm going to get a message

00:56:57.160 or an email from somebody who's going to be offended by something I said. And because we live in this

00:57:02.000 culture of outrage, we can't have the difficult and much needed conversations like the one that we're

00:57:07.540 having today. It's really frustrating, in fact. Your ability to both ask crucial questions, do your

00:57:12.580 homework about, you know, reading the boy crisis first rather than just winging it, and then listen

00:57:17.140 as well as you do, and then do good follow-up questions are really part of the process that

00:57:20.740 helps a dialogue be constructive. Thanks, Warren. I appreciate that. Well, as we wind down,

00:57:25.760 let me ask you a couple additional questions. The first one is, what does it mean to be a man?

00:57:29.860 It means discovering yourself and what is unique about you, and then combining that

00:57:38.040 with discovering, is there a way I can be a responsible contributor to whatever level of

00:57:44.900 family I want to have so that I'm not just doing what fulfills me, but leaving my wife or my children

00:57:53.240 in a position where they, that doesn't account for what fulfills them. It's fulfilling yourself

00:57:59.440 in balance with taking responsibility for providing options for your family at the same time and

00:58:07.960 experimenting with adventure, with that blend, and then talking to your family about how is this

00:58:15.160 working for you? What is working? What is not working for you? Being willing to listen to their feedback

00:58:20.440 about, you know, dad, you seem a little bit off today, or when I approach you and you interrupt

00:58:27.200 me and give me an answer before I've asked my question fully, I don't feel invited to approach

00:58:32.800 you more. And so these are the types of things that I think it takes to be a man. The good news is,

00:58:38.640 for the first time in human history, you have more permission to discover yourself that our fathers

00:58:44.560 and grandfathers never had the chance to do. Our fathers and grandfathers were not human beings.

00:58:49.760 They were human doings. I'm a doctor, I'm a lawyer, I'm a, you know, that type of thing.

00:58:55.840 But today we have the option of being human beings. But as I've mentioned before, the more

00:59:00.760 fulfilling the occupation is there's a reason we hear starving artists. Almost every actor in Los

00:59:07.020 Angeles has the same name called waiter. And so, you know, because men who follow their bliss don't

00:59:12.960 usually make a lot of money. If you don't make a lot of money, you're oftentimes not able to share

00:59:17.720 the responsibilities economically once you have children. And so being a man today is having the

00:59:24.240 encouragement, the mentorship to be able to explore your soul, your unique self on the one hand,

00:59:33.040 and your responsible, accountable self on the other.

00:59:36.740 That's powerful. Really, really powerful. Well, how do we connect with you? I've got my copy of the

00:59:40.920 book right here. How do we connect with you? How do we pick up a copy of the book and learn more about

00:59:45.040 the work that you're doing? Yes. If you just do Boy Crisis, the Boy Crisis book will come up. Amazon

00:59:49.880 is definitely the least expensive place to get it. And if you're a guy and you have a commute to work

00:59:55.040 or a woman who has a commute to work, I've been getting actually as much positive feedback about

00:59:59.260 the audible version. I spent five days in studio reading every single word of the book. And then

01:00:04.220 John Gray did the part on ADHD. He knows far more about ADHD than almost anybody that I know.

01:00:09.160 And what are the non-prescription, non-drug alternatives to ADHD? A lot of people seem

01:00:15.020 to enjoy the listening as much as the reading. Excellent. Well, we'll link all that up. I just

01:00:19.300 want to tell you that I really, really appreciate you. I appreciate you taking time out of your day

01:00:23.320 to come on this show and impart some of that wisdom. And you've enhanced my life, you know,

01:00:27.360 reading this book, going through your work and incorporating some of what you've taught into

01:00:30.700 my life as a father and a man and raising my kids and leading with my wife has been very,

01:00:36.300 very impactful. So I want to tell you, I appreciate you and thank you for coming on the show today.

01:00:40.920 Thank you so much, Ryan. There's nothing that's more important to me than

01:00:43.420 contributing to a family's love. I really appreciate that.

01:00:47.400 There it is, guys. My conversation with Dr. Warren Farrell. I hope that you enjoyed that one as much

01:00:51.760 as I did. If you've got a son or you're a father type figure in the community or in your church or

01:00:57.880 wherever it may be in school, this is just such a valuable, valuable discussion. And if you haven't

01:01:03.780 picked up a copy of Dr. Farrell's book, The Boy Crisis, I highly, highly recommend that you do.

01:01:09.160 It's such a powerful read and you're going to walk away with some very specific strategies and ideas

01:01:15.380 and new thoughts about how to raise our future generations of men. So guys, if you liked the show

01:01:21.400 or if you didn't like the show, make sure you drop us a line. Let us know what you thought. Let us know

01:01:25.700 what you're taking away. Connect with us on Twitter, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, wherever you're doing

01:01:31.380 the social media thing. And we'd love to continue this discussion. It's so critical. As a father

01:01:36.640 myself, making sure that I know what my boys are in for and my daughter, because we talked about that

01:01:42.480 as well, is critical. So important and so valuable in my life. So I'll leave you there, guys. I'm glad

01:01:48.740 as always that you're tuning in. Please, if you would make sure to remember the rating review contest

01:01:52.940 that we're doing between now and the end of September, we're giving away hats, shirts, signed copies of

01:01:59.240 the book, one-on-one calls. We're considering doing a meetup and we're going to have a good

01:02:04.500 time, get you guys some stuff. And in the meantime, we're going to continue to boost the visibility of

01:02:08.640 what we're doing here with this movement, Order of Man. So I'm glad that you're on the journey.

01:02:12.940 You helped me. You inspire me to be a better man myself. And I want to thank you for that.

01:02:16.900 So until tomorrow for our new Ask Me Anything episode, guys go out there, take action and become the

01:02:23.540 man you are meant to be. Thank you for listening to the Order of Man podcast. If you're ready to

01:02:29.140 take charge of your life and be more of the man you were meant to be, we invite you to join the order

01:02:33.940 at orderofman.com.

Order of Man - September 04, 2018

The Boy Crisis ｜ DR. WARREN FARRELL

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