The Boy Crisis ｜ DR. WARREN FARRELL
Episode Stats
Length
1 hour and 2 minutes
Words per Minute
185.04378
Summary
Dr. Warren Farrell is a leader in understanding the issues our boys are facing. He has been on CNN's Larry King Live, Oprah Winfrey's Good Morning America, and Forbes Magazine's The Top 100 Thought Leaders. He is the only man to ever be elected three times to the National Organization for Women and has been selected as one of the Top 100 Thinkers by the Feminist Wall Street Journal.
Transcript
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There is no question our boys are in trouble. Take a look at any metric and it becomes painfully
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obvious that our young men are falling behind. Violence, grades, drug abuse, and suicide to name
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a few. The question is not, is it happening, but why? Today I am joined by Dr. Warren Farrell,
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a leader in understanding the issues our boys are facing. We talk about how men have fallen
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into a purpose void, why boys need to be raised differently than girls, the rise of the incels,
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and how to deal with the emerging boy crisis. You're a man of action. You live life to the
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fullest. Embrace your fears and boldly chart your own path. When life knocks you down, you get back
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up one more time. Every time. You are not easily deterred or defeated. Rugged. Resilient. Strong.
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This is your life. This is who you are. This is who you will become. At the end of the day,
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and after all is said and done, you can call yourself a man. Gentlemen, what is going on?
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My name is Ryan Mickler, and I am the host and the founder of this podcast and this movement,
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The Order of Man. As I do every week, I want to welcome you. Whether you're just tuning in
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or you've been with us for any amount of time, this movement continues to grow, and it's a testament to
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the fact that what we are doing here is much needed. In a society that is seeming to more and
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more dismiss masculinity, we are trying to reclaim it. So we're banding together with tens of thousands,
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hundreds of thousands, even millions of men across the planet, all working together to
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become better fathers, husbands, business owners, community leaders. And we do that
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partially through this podcast. We're interviewing the world's most successful men. These are guys
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like Jocko Willink, Lewis Howes, Andy Frisilla, Grant Cardone, Tim Kennedy. I mean, we've got so
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many great guests that have come on the show and we will continue to have great guests like we do
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today, Dr. Warren Farrell. But before I get into that, like I do every week, just a couple of
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quick announcements. Number one, if you would, please leave a rating and review for this podcast.
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We actually went up from the number 98 position in all of business on iTunes up to number 22 within
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a period of 24 hours because we had about 50 reviews coming in. We're doing a big push for ratings and
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reviews. And up until the end of September, we're running a contest. We'll be giving away shirts,
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hats, signed copies of the book. We're entering you into drawings for one-on-one conversations
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with me. And we're also thinking about doing an event that will pick a handful of those of you
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who have left a rating and review between now and the end of September for a event. This probably will
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be a one or two day event and we'll take care of the costs associated with that and have a pretty
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good weekend together. So if you are interested in joining that drawing and being entered for the
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swag and the merchandise and the hats and the shirts and the books and everything else that we're going
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to be giving away, all you have to do is leave a review. We're monitoring those. We're checking those
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out. Leave a rating review on iTunes between now and the end of September, and you will be entered
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into the drawings. Now, the other thing I wanted to make mention of is our store. I just had a new
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shirt come out, which I think you guys will like. It's a protect, provide, preside shirt.
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So make sure you check that out as well as order of man flags. I've had so many questions and people
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asking about when a flag would be available. There are order of man flags available now.
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We just announced those last week and we've sold a ton of those. So make sure you jump on that quick.
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You can see our, our merchandise at store.orderofman.com. So leave a rating review,
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head to our store. That's all the announcements. So with that done and out of the way, I want to
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introduce you to my guest today. Really excited about this one, guys. His name is Dr. Warren
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Farrell. He's a leader in the movement to understand the myriad of issues that our young
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men are facing. I'm sure you're well aware of some of these. Previously, a feminist and the only man
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to ever be elected three times to the National Organization for Women. He's since seen what the
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feminist movement has become and its negative impact on our boys. He's been selected as one of the
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world's top 100 thought leaders. And he's been on CNN, Larry King Live, Oprah, The Today Show,
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Good Morning America. He's been on New York Times, Forbes, Wall Street Journal. I mean,
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he's just been everywhere. And you're going to hear why as we go through this conversation today.
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But he's taught at all levels of education. And he speaks at Fortune 500 companies,
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military branches. He spoke at NASA. It was such an honor to talk with Dr. Farrell and get so much
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incredible insight into his own thoughts and boys and gender in general. And I know I walked away
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with a ton of information with regards to raising my sons and daughter. So guys, I hope you enjoy the
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conversation. Warren, good to talk with you. I'm excited to have this conversation today.
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Thank you. I'm looking forward to it too. I love your vibration, your informality.
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Thank you. Thank you. Yeah. I try to have just an open dialogue, an open discussion. And there's
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some things that, man, in reading your book, The Boy Crisis, and obviously becoming familiar with your
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work, it's just, it really resonates with me because I've got kids of my own. I've got four
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children. I've got three boys. And I recognize a lot of what you're talking about. And as I was going
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through this book, I just thought to myself, yes, yes, yes. Like a checklist of all the things that
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I'm dealing with as a father and the things that I know my boys will be dealing with as well. So
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looking forward to the conversation. Can you give me an example of one or two of those things that
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just struck you as something that you're dealing with as a father? With education system, my kids
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aren't that old yet. I have, my oldest is 10 years old, but I can definitely see in the educational
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system how that seems to be stacked against him. He's told, frankly, to sit down, to shut up,
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to color within the lines, to do what he's told. And from my experience, personal experience,
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that's not how I enjoyed learning. And it's not how I enjoy learning now. And so I can see how
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difficult it's going to be when it comes to getting him to engage in meaningful information
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that's going to improve his life. Yes. So you didn't like learning in handcuffs and mental cuffs?
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In college, I went to about a half a semester of college and I said, I'm out of here. And I went into
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landscaping and I did pizza delivery and I did retail sale and I bounced around from place to place to
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place because I'd remember specifically that college was frankly just a miserable experience
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for me. Wow. Well, I'm sorry about that. That's okay. We're doing okay now though.
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Yeah. It seems like you are. You had the strength to find yourself as opposed to just coloring in the
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box. Yeah, I think that's true. And I've been fortunate enough to have some really good experiences
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that have allowed me to do that and been surrounded by other good men who have, and women, frankly,
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who have helped me see a different way of learning and exposing myself to new information and pursuing
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a passion, which is something you talk a lot about when it comes to men. Yes.
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Well, let's talk about that. Let's talk about the passion component of this because I think that's
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one of the underlying premises in your book is that men are lacking real purpose, I think is the term
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you use. And do you find that to be the case? Is that the biggest challenge that you see among men?
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It's a combination of two things, the purpose void and the dad void combined. In those two arenas,
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when you put them together, that's where the boy crisis exists. So for example, in the old days,
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we had natural senses of purpose. The culture said, you are a boy, you become a warrior and,
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or you become a soul breadwinner. If you did one or both of those, you were considered growable into a
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man. You got a lot of what I call social bribes to do those things. You were told that Uncle Sam
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wants you and their dad and mom would be proud of you if you had a military uniform on. And
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especially if you were in the elite, the more dangerous your job was, the more disposable you
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were, the more you were valued. You were very disposable as a Navy SEAL, even more so than in the
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regular military, but you were then given elite status, which then bribed you to be disposable.
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And similarly in the workplace, if you're a working class man and you didn't have a lot of education,
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the emphasis was for you to use your hands and to be in the death profession would give you what I
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call the death profession bonus. So you would enter one of the hazardous professions that into the logging
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industry or into the trucking industry or into the welding industry at the top of a bridge at which
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you are at risk for your life, but as a coal miner, et cetera. But on the other hand, you could earn a
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living for your family. And so you were told if you figured out a way of being a sole breadwinner
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at work, you would be possible father material. A woman would feel that her family would approve of
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her falling in love with you and having children with you. What a woman was warned to not want is a
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lovely, sweet man who was reading the boy crisis on the unemployment line.
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Has that changed though? I mean, have women really at a fundamental and foundational level
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changed what they're looking for in men, or are they still looking for some of those characteristics?
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They're still looking for those characteristics if they are planning to have children. Everything
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turns with children. So for example, the pay gap, we always hear the gender pay gap between men and
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women. That gender pay gap is assumed to be a male-female gap, but it's actually not a male-female gap.
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It's a father-mother gap. When a man and woman become parents, the woman is statistically speaking
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far more likely to choose among three things, either work full-time, children full-time,
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or do some combination of both. So even if she works full-time, she's likely to cut her hours back
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so she has flexibility with the children. And 40% of women, when they have children, don't work full-time,
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even part-time. They stay at home, 40% work full-time and 20% work part-time. And so the average
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pay of the average mother goes down considerably. And I imagine the type of work too that they choose,
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even if they are working full-time, I imagine is maybe not so focused or career advancement
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centric and allows a lot more flexibility and scheduling and time to be with children and those
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sorts of considerations as well. That's exactly right. It's fathers then that really focus on,
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it used to be that the mother and father, before they had children, they would share the responsibilities
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of a small home, but that the child comes, she cuts back her work or completely stops her work
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outside the home. She's working enormously with the child. And he then has to more than double up
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because he's not only having to provide for himself, but also mostly for her. And then also for the
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child, then also for any emergencies that might come up. So he's got to have more of a safety net
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there for them. He becomes focused on that. Now let's get back to purpose void. Purpose void is
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he doesn't now have an identity as a man by being a worrier or a sole breadwinner. If he's working in a
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middle-class job or an executive type of job, he is oftentimes when the child comes feeling like,
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okay, I'm now regional manager in charge of such and such, selling such and such product. I need
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more money. I better accept that offer to become a national manager. I'm now a teacher and I love my
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passion. My passion is teaching. I'll get more money as a vice principal or a principal. So I'd better give
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up my passion and do what I need to do. The feminist movement has been completely, this is a complete
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misunderstanding. They've felt that men, because they earn more, have more power and more privilege
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when in fact they have more obligation and more expectation. And the men who earn more are fulfilling
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that obligation and that expectation. That's the male form of discrimination against men. It is not
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the discrimination for men. Men as fathers earn significantly more because they have an expectation
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to do so. Okay. So now we have a little bit less of that expectation. So the good news is there's
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more flexibility. The bad news is that there is a purpose for it. If I can interject real quick,
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I mean, from my experience, and maybe this is what you're getting into, is anytime that I've added
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obligations, expectations, and responsibilities in my life, as long as those things are moral, ethical,
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and legal, I have added a sense of purpose to my life. I don't know if this is exclusive to men or
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generally typical of men, but I believe that I personally and a lot of men that I work with thrive
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on additional and added responsibility and weight on our shoulders. Evidence for that is that boys who
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are having problems are very helped by mentors. They're helped even more by becoming a mentor. As soon as a
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boy is encouraged or becoming like a Boy Scout and going from Boy Scout earning merit badges to becoming
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patrol leader or a Boy Scout earning enough merit badges to become starlight for eagle, and then other
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people look up to them and they have an image to fulfill and they feel like doing something purposeful
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is really important. But now here is the big issue. The boy crisis is created by the combination of the
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purpose void plus the dad void. So the boy crisis exists largely among two groups of boys. Boys that are
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the children of parents of divorce in which the boy does not have consistent and dependable involvement
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of a significant nature with his dad after divorce. So if the mom is the primary parent, the boy doesn't
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have a role model of his same sex that he can look up to, to take him from the greater purpose void
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through to saying, here's what I need to do for you, son. I need to work with you to help you discover
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what is the unique parts of you, what fulfills you, what motivates you, and at the same time to prepare
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you for obligations. So if you say that just being a full-time babysitter to the people in the
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neighborhood is what you love to do, I've got to help you make translate that into not just being
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a babysitter, but maybe being a teacher, maybe being a caretaker that pays. So you're talking about
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the opportunity to provide, turning that interest into a provisional opportunity so that you can be
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a more effective husband, father, and so on. Am I understanding that correctly? Exactly. Okay. And so the
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father is one of the reasons that girls are doing so much better than boys are. Girls being raised in
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single-parent homes are being raised in single mom homes for the most part. So they have a same-sex
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role model to help guide them through their uniqueness. Plus they have a cultural message.
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And the cultural message to girls as a result of the feminist movement is you can be anything you want
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to be. You can raise children, you can raise money, you can do some combination of both,
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you can do all raise money and for a while, and then raise children completely for a while. You can
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do it sequentially. You can do it in any way, shape, and form, and you will be respected as a
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girl, woman. And I, as your mom, here's what I did that was right. Here's what I did that was wrong.
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Here's what I would change. Here's what you've seen me do. And so the girl has this constant feedback
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from her gender. What's the cultural message that boys are receiving? If girls are receiving the message
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that you can be anything and do whatever you want in whatever order or whatever it may be,
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what do you see as the cultural message that, that our young boys are receiving?
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Boys receive a fair amount of that message until they become a dad. And if they become a dad,
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they learn that their three options are not raise children, raise money, do some combination of both,
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but rather they have three options too, which is raise money, raise money, or raise money,
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you know, or work full time, work full time, work full time. Or if they're a working class man,
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maybe work two jobs. If they're a middle-class man, just increase the intensity of the number
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of hours they put into and the responsibilities they take on at a middle-class job.
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Do you see any statistics about the men who, for example, stay at home while the women enters the
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workforce as far as fulfillment, purpose, and even just a general sense of satisfaction? Is it higher?
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Is it lower? Is it the equivalent? Yes. I'm curious.
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The children that have stay at home dads, if that does not result in a divorce,
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and I'll get to that issue in a moment, then the children do extremely well. So that's the good
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news. Both boys and girls do well? Boys and girls do very well. Boys and girls that have a significant
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amount of father involvement, the girls, they do better in 70 different areas than I was able
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to document in the process of researching the boy crisis. Most of the areas are the same,
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but they have two distinctions. One is the boys are more likely to feel the negative consequences
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more intensely. So I'll be really technical here, but it's for a minute's worth of technical
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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,
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T-E-L-O-M-E-R-S. They're contained in your cells. Telomeres are long. Your genes will easily reproduce
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genes that prevent cancer, that prevent disease, and so on. If your telomeres are short, that predicts
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exactly the opposite, a shorter life expectancy. By the age of nine, if you have 14% shorter telomeres,
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that means your life expectancy will be approximately 14% shorter. By the age of nine,
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boys and girls, on average, that have significant father involvement have 14% longer telomeres than
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boys and girls who do not have significant father involvement by the age of nine.
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Is that due to father involvement, or does that just happen to be correlating data, or is that
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a consequence, if you will, of having a father involved, meaning that's actually influencing the
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telomeres? There's enough data to suggest that it's most likely due to lack of father involvement or
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conversely to father involvement. Interesting. Just discovered recently, so not every cross test has
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been done on that, but 14% shorter for boys and girls on average, but boys have 40% shorter telomeres
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than their sisters already by the age of nine. Everything else being equal.
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Everything else being equal. So you can get a sense of the power of lack of father involvement
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on both our sons and our daughters, but the proportionally greater power of the lack of
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father involvement of 40% more. More significant for boys.
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Exactly, for boys. And in almost every area that I studied, like in all of the 70 areas where boys do
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worse than girls do when they have lack of father involvement, all 70 of those areas where I was
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able to get good measures of both girls' problems and boys' problems, I found that the girls in most
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of those areas did worse, but not as badly as the boys did. The areas where the girls did even worse
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than the boys were areas like in their adjustment to sexuality with boys. So for example, the lack of
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comfort with a male by not having a father in the house often leads to girls not knowing how to
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please a male in a way other than being sexual with them. They'll be sexual before they're really
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ready to be sexual for fear of losing the boy to some other girl who will be sexual with him.
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They don't have other resources to say that, you know, there's something valuable about me other than
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That's interesting because, and I know this might come across as weird, but I see my daughter
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in that she has an attraction to me. I don't mean a sexual, that's not what I'm talking about.
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For some reason, she is infatuated by me as a male presence. And I think what I see in my relationship
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with her is that we can have a relationship outside of what you're saying, these sexual type feelings
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or whatever they may be in that she recognized she is enough, that she is adequate without having
00:20:27.380
Insofar as we know, that is exactly right. She can play with you. She can, you can do roughhousing
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And, you know, you can be physically close to her without that being a sign that you're going to
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And so that creates a trust and a very deep experience for girls that male does not mean
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sexual automatically, that my dad could play with me, could roughhouse, could allow me to
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jump off the couch onto his back. And if I did the right thing with, especially if I was doing
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that with my brother and that together we did the right thing, we could get dad underneath us
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and we could, you know, we could win the wrestling match.
00:21:04.740
Right. And that's something that traditionally women, and I'm talking specifically about
00:21:10.220
mother figures, just aren't going to do. And you talk about the distinctions and some
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of the things that dads add to the equation that mothers traditionally do not. And one
00:21:20.340
And first of all, let me make it clear that mothers bring a lot to the family table.
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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.
00:22:12.360
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,
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two things. Oh, my God, I am right. I saw that I foresaw that I should have been proactive in
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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?
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Like they don't even seem connected, except maybe disconnected, connected inversely.
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.
00:27:19.640
So then he returns to the rough housing and gives them a chance to practice it and do it better.
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
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.
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,
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
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
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
00:33:54.560
it because what is pornography for a boy? Pornography is access to a variety of attractive women without
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
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00:35:18.960
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and lock in your spot at order of man.com slash iron council. Again, that's order of man.com slash
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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.
00:36:26.080
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
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,
00:37:03.300
yeah, that was just a terrible experience. And the only girl that is okay with it is the one that
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.
00:37:33.740
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
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.
00:39:35.120
That's a typical difference in male-female parenting. Omar Mateen's father was just like the female is. So
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
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.
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
00:40:26.000
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.
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
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
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
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
00:42:50.200
feminism, is that they've turned the term toxic masculinity to equate masculine and toxicity when
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
00:43:19.580
and femininity also have extraordinary plus sides as well. And so feminism has turned even some of the
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,
00:43:41.140
you're male, you have male privilege, you have male power, proof, all the CEOs and the-
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
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
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
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
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.
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
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
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.
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
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
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
00:48:35.160
what the men earn. And so when you investigate that, you find that the women start their own business so
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.
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
00:49:11.300
answers what she wants by, there's no male boss, it's her business. She earns even less than she
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
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.
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
00:51:43.820
taking the sexual initiative. So sex is dirty. I'm expected to initiate the dirt. And how do I
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
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,
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
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,
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
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
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
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.
00:56:48.500
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