The Matt Walsh Show - Ep. 7 - Parents in America Need to Start Doing Some Actual Parenting

00:00:00.000 Welcome to the show, everybody. Thanks for watching. So let me just say to start with here

00:00:07.140 that I am very sympathetic to parents because I am a parent. I've got three kids. I know how

00:00:15.440 difficult it is to be a parent. Or I should say, we back up for a minute, because parents always

00:00:21.320 like to say, well, being a parent is the hardest job in the world. I've said it myself. That's

00:00:26.560 true with a qualifier. To raise a child to be a good person in this degenerate, disgusting culture,

00:00:37.080 that is the hardest job in the world for sure. That is a 24-7, never sleep, round the clock,

00:00:42.640 relentless, stressful, heartbreaking, strenuous job that just never ends. And every fiber of your

00:00:51.740 being must be invested in it all the time, constantly, if you want to raise your kid to

00:00:56.200 be a good person. So that's the hardest job in the world. But just to raise a kid in general,

00:01:02.680 if by raising a kid, we mean, well, that you have them in your house and you feed them food and you

00:01:07.800 put the TV on for them and you make sure they're wearing some kind of clothing and maybe you take

00:01:14.720 them on a vacation every once in a while. If that's what we mean by raising a kid, well, then no,

00:01:20.040 that's not the hardest job in the world. That in and of itself is not a difficult job at all,

00:01:25.240 actually. Literally anyone can do it and anyone does do it. So that in and of itself is not hard.

00:01:33.580 What is hard is raising your kid to be a good person. I fear that the problem is that many

00:01:39.160 parents in this culture aren't so much worried about the moral formation of their kids. They're

00:01:44.740 not worried about raising their kids to be good people. They're more worried about, well,

00:01:48.880 they need to be a good student. They need to get good grades. We got to get them into a good

00:01:53.100 college. We got to make sure they get a good career. There are parents who aren't worried

00:01:57.620 about any of this stuff whatsoever, but there are plenty of parents who are worried about that.

00:02:01.480 But in terms of the state of their child's soul, well, they don't concern themselves as much with

00:02:08.440 that. And that is just bad parenting. It's not just bad parenting. That is awful parenting. That

00:02:16.380 is non-parenting. That is, you may as well not even be parenting. You could just make a robot with

00:02:25.780 a computer algorithm that could do that. The hard part is the moral formation. And I fear that a lot

00:02:32.320 of us just don't worry about that. I bring that up just as a means of introduction to this topic,

00:02:37.040 which I think is kind of an illustration of a larger problem. So every year, it seems like we

00:02:43.780 get maybe, I don't know, 10 or 12 national dress code outrages. It's always the same thing.

00:02:51.680 A teenager goes to school dressed inappropriately or hardly dressed at all. And the school is forced

00:02:57.760 to reassert its dress code policies. And that, of course, that's a horrible, oppressive thing.

00:03:03.340 And it persecutes the poor child. And she runs home to her mother and tells her mother. And the

00:03:09.020 mother calls the school and alerts the media. And then the child, who, by the way, is so embarrassed

00:03:13.560 by all this and humiliated, then goes on social media and tells everyone in the world, because

00:03:18.280 that's what you do when you're embarrassed about something. You tell everybody. And then that's how

00:03:23.920 it becomes a national outrage. This happens, like I said, probably 10 or 12 times a year.

00:03:28.020 And it really ramps up when we get into the warmer weather. So we're starting to see now.

00:03:34.540 And we got our first dose of this, this week, with a national dress code outrage. I think it's

00:03:42.260 our first of the year. One of many, I'm sure, before the year is up. I'm not going to go into the

00:03:47.520 specifics of this story. It doesn't really matter. I'm just using this as an intro, as a means into

00:03:52.520 this larger conversation. I mean, in this case, it was the girl. She went to school without

00:03:57.460 undergarments on. And that was a problem for the school, understandably. They handled the problem

00:04:03.900 in kind of a clumsy, weird way. And so then the daughter went home and told the mom. And the mom

00:04:09.580 and the daughter are now saying that she's persecuted and it's terrible and she's been sexualized and so

00:04:13.820 on and so forth. Now, it is true that schools are very often clumsy, as I said, and awkward and

00:04:21.800 weird in how they deal with this stuff. But I don't fault them for that. Because they shouldn't

00:04:30.840 have to deal with it at all. And there really isn't any non-awkward way for an adult to tell

00:04:39.800 another adult's kid that she's not wearing enough clothing. There is no way to do that,

00:04:45.360 no way at all, that will not be embarrassing to everybody involved in the situation. There's

00:04:51.360 just once you have, as an adult, as a parent, put another adult in the position where they have to

00:04:57.340 have that conversation, you have put them in a lose-lose situation. There's nothing they can do.

00:05:02.160 So the schools, as they're looking at this issue, they have two general avenues they can take. The

00:05:11.360 first avenue is let's do nothing and just accept the fact that our hallways are going to resemble

00:05:18.180 a downtown bar at 1am on a Saturday. We'll just accept that and whatever. Or we can try to impose

00:05:29.760 some basic standard of decency and decorum and dignity in our school. I respect the schools that

00:05:40.100 take the latter approach. I give them a lot of leeway, even when they do it awkwardly.

00:05:44.340 Um, I can generally be pretty hard on the school system, I admit, but, but I acknowledge that they

00:05:50.180 are in an unenviable situation in an almost impossible situation where they're constantly

00:05:57.960 having to do things that parents won't do. And they're constantly having to have these conversations

00:06:06.020 that parents won't have with their kids. Sometimes the, sometimes the schools go too

00:06:11.680 far. They take too much liberty. And so for instance, they'll, you know, they, they want to

00:06:17.360 talk to the kids about sex, like in kindergarten now, because they say, well, the parents aren't

00:06:21.620 doing it. That's something that you got to leave to the parents. And if they don't do it, they don't

00:06:26.340 do it. But that's not for the schools to do at all, except for teaching the kids, the basic

00:06:31.880 biological scientific facts of sex, when it, when, when it's appropriate for their age group

00:06:36.260 in science. But beyond that, to go anymore into sexual ethics or telling them when to have sex and,

00:06:43.320 you know, just that's not for the schools to do. Um, especially government schools, but

00:06:52.160 basic decency, basic modesty. Well, if they don't have a conversation about that with the kids

00:06:59.540 and the parents don't have a conversation with that, about that, with the kids, then we're back

00:07:04.580 to the schools looking like a red light district. And that's not really an acceptable outcome.

00:07:10.980 So the schools have to do something. Now we were discussing this a couple of days ago in my, um,

00:07:17.180 Facebook group, and I received quite a few messages from teachers who, uh, tell me that kids

00:07:25.200 regularly come to school. These are their words, not mine dress like hookers and streetwalkers. 1.00

00:07:33.560 And there's nothing they can do about it. And one thing that all these teachers echoed to me

00:07:37.840 is that those of us who are not in school and those of us who don't have teenagers,

00:07:43.180 um, we probably don't really understand how bad it is, how crazy it's gotten with the outfits and

00:07:52.660 just the inappropriate, ridiculous, as they say, hookerish outfits that these kids are coming to

00:07:58.400 school in. Now, maybe it's not like this in every school, but some of these stories that teachers

00:08:03.880 told me, I mean, it's, I, you know, I, I graduated high school. Um, I don't know how old am I now?

00:08:13.520 I graduated high school like 15 years ago, uh, around there, 15, 20 years ago, 25. I don't know.

00:08:20.140 But for me, it wasn't so long ago that things should have changed that much, but, and it was

00:08:24.880 pretty bad when I went to school, but it's apparently so much worse even now. But if the

00:08:29.000 parents are alerted to the problem, and this is the case, you know, not just with dress code stuff,

00:08:33.180 but just in general, if you listen to the teachers, this is what they say. You try to talk to a parent

00:08:37.520 about a problem involving the kid and the parents will rush to their little darling's defense and

00:08:43.160 become very indignant that anyone would dare give their poor child a lecture. How dare you?

00:08:49.100 It's none of your business to which the school should reply. Well, when you send your kid

00:08:55.240 into public half naked, it is our business. Now you've made it our business. I wish it wasn't,

00:09:00.660 but now it is, that's your fault. Be a parent. Um, but of course the real source of their indignation

00:09:08.420 is embarrassment. They are not embarrassed over the conduct of their child. Like they should be

00:09:14.260 they're embarrassed and they feel personally chastised that a school employee had to mop up

00:09:20.220 after their negligent parenting. They realize on some level that they're doing a terrible job

00:09:25.860 parenting. Um, they're not really parenting at all. And so the schools had to do it for them

00:09:30.520 and that makes them feel bad. And that's why, you know, the parents who not, like I said,

00:09:34.680 not just with wardrobes, but when a kid is being disruptive, acting out,

00:09:39.040 and, um, the schools have to talk to a parent about it. When the parent gets defensive and says,

00:09:45.220 no way, how did that? My, my kid didn't do that. You, that's the teacher doesn't like him. It's all

00:09:50.160 your fault. He's being persecuted. Not, not all parents respond that way. That's not how my parents

00:09:55.120 responded when I went to school and I got in trouble. But, um, the parents who do respond that

00:09:59.260 way, it's, they're not defending their kid. They're defending themselves. That's all they're doing.

00:10:06.240 It's just selfishness. It's all about them. They're defending themselves and they're saying,

00:10:09.900 how dare you? Because if it's true that my kid's doing that, then that means that maybe I'm doing

00:10:13.680 something wrong at home and I can't face that fact. So no. Um, but this is what you get parents

00:10:24.000 when you leave the parenting to the school system. It's embarrassing for you. And I, and I imagine it,

00:10:32.880 it must be embarrassing when you've got a,

00:10:36.240 come in and have a meeting with a teacher, talk to a teacher on the phone and hear all these things

00:10:41.120 that your kid's doing wrong. Um, that's embarrassing. But if your kid, you know,

00:10:49.180 if your kid gets a lectured by the assistant principal over her miniskirt or whatever,

00:10:54.480 don't be indignant at the school. The assistant principal was just doing something that you

00:11:00.540 refuse to do. It should have been you giving the lecture, but you didn't do it. So they had to do it.

00:11:05.400 It would have been better coming from you, but you didn't do it. So they did. That's your fault.

00:11:09.040 Be indignant at yourself. Be embarrassed about yourself. Be angry at yourself.

00:11:16.160 If you're not going to do your job, then the school system is going to pinch hit.

00:11:19.760 And the school system has to do a lot of pinch hitting because there are a lot of parents who

00:11:23.980 just aren't doing their job. And I think the school system oftentimes does a bad job of

00:11:28.200 pinch hitting, but it's an indictment on America's parents that they even have to step up to the

00:11:34.680 plate at all because they shouldn't have to. Here is a, here's an idea.

00:11:39.280 Maybe we should instill in our children a sense of dignity and self-respect.

00:11:53.620 Maybe we should teach them modesty and we should teach them to be humble. We should teach them to

00:11:58.520 dress with class and with maturity. Maybe we should teach them to stop seeking attention. Maybe we should

00:12:07.160 teach them to respect authority. Teach them to be adults in a civilized society. The whole, this is

00:12:15.180 the whole point of parenting. If you're not going to see to your child's moral formation, then what

00:12:22.520 are you doing? What, what exactly are you doing? I often hear parents say, well, I mean, uh, I don't

00:12:30.520 want to force my child to be a certain way. I don't want to force him to fit into a box. I want him to

00:12:36.380 find himself. He doesn't know how to find himself. He doesn't know where to look. He's confused. He's a

00:12:45.500 kid. He doesn't know who he is. He's a, he's a, he's a child. He doesn't know anything. He knows

00:12:50.520 nothing about, about anything. That's your job to tell him, to show him, to guide him.

00:12:58.880 Don't say, oh, he's got to find himself. He's got to figure out his identity. He's got to express

00:13:02.840 himself. He doesn't know any, he's confused. Don't you see that? He's bewildered. He's got,

00:13:08.380 he doesn't know which way is up because you never told him. That's your job. So yes, you should be,

00:13:16.240 you should be getting your child to conform with, with, uh, with, he should be conforming with basic

00:13:23.100 standards of etiquette and decency and courtesy. He should be conforming with some kind of moral

00:13:29.440 structure. He should be conforming with the rules of the family. He should be conforming

00:13:35.100 with the rules in the school. He should be conforming under the authority of those who are

00:13:39.580 above him. He should be conforming with the idea that he should respect his elders. Yes, he should

00:13:45.240 be conforming to all of those things. Those are boxes that he should be fitting in and you should

00:13:50.860 be putting him in those boxes. That's your job. Again, if you're not going to do that as a parent,

00:13:56.520 then, and I say this with all due respect, but as a parent, you're basically useless. You're not

00:14:02.880 doing anything that there are specific things that society needs parents to do. And in this case,

00:14:11.760 if you're one of those, you're not doing any of those things. So what, what's the point? What are you

00:14:19.340 doing? You may as well just ship them to a boarding school or something at that point, because you're not

00:14:26.520 the, the whole, the whole parenting deal you've just checked out on.

00:14:32.580 He's going to find himself. I mean, people say this now about their, uh, you know, people say

00:14:37.980 this now about like their four-year-olds. Oh, he's got to find himself. He's got to,

00:14:41.340 got to figure out his own identity. He's four, you nutcase. What are you doing? He's four years old.

00:14:47.080 Got to find himself. Can't find any, can't even tie his shoes. Doesn't know anything. Yeah. You got

00:14:55.940 to tell him he's a boy. This is what boys do. This is how boys act. Again, that's your job. You're a

00:15:02.500 parent. Um, all right. Got a little worked up there. I, I just, it really, this is the thing.

00:15:16.520 This is the thing above maybe anything else in this society that, uh, irritates me the most.

00:15:24.380 These parents who just categorically refuse to do their job, refuse to do it.

00:15:31.900 One other point, um, one other point I want to make. Okay. And I know this is a thing that gets

00:15:39.660 me into trouble, but, um, when we're talking, you know, just going back specifically to the dress code

00:15:45.380 issue. One of the things that you hear sometimes is that one of the reasons why we should have dress

00:15:53.580 codes and why we should teach our daughters to respect the dress codes is that it can be very 0.99

00:15:58.160 distracting for boys in the school. If the girls are coming in dressed, like they're going to the 1.00

00:16:06.260 beach. Right. Um, and we, when someone makes that argument, we tend to write that off and say,

00:16:12.660 that's a, that's a silly, sexist, patriarchal argument. It's not my problem. What your boy

00:16:18.180 does. It's not my, if your boy can't control himself, it's not my problem. It's not my daughter's

00:16:22.460 problem. He's got to deal with it. That's a terrible attitude. And it's a terrible attitude

00:16:30.480 to instill in your daughter is a terrible, obnoxious, selfish, ugly attitude. Um, it is not sexist 0.90

00:16:38.320 to point out that your daughter's skimpy outfits really are extremely distracting to the boys in

00:16:46.540 her school. They are, if you've never been a teenage boy and you've never been the parent

00:16:54.680 of a teenage boy, then you really do not understand the overwhelming power that a boy's hormones

00:17:03.920 have over him at a certain age. And I know that girls have hormones too, and they've got their own 1.00

00:17:10.160 issues with that. Not downplaying that at all, but those are different issues and it's not the same.

00:17:15.480 And the, the fixation on the opposite sex on sex in general, this is something that is so much more 0.53

00:17:27.920 pronounced for boys than it is for girls. That's just a biological reality. There are exceptions,

00:17:32.820 but they are just that exception for the most part is so much more powerful and pronounced than boys.

00:17:37.960 And they can't control that. They can't, you know, we can try to teach them to control their actions,

00:17:43.040 but they can't control the fixation. They can't control what their mind is doing inside their

00:17:48.060 head. Um, it's not an exaggeration to say that it is very nearly impossible, very nearly impossible

00:17:58.100 for a, for a pubescent boy to focus on his work while his girl classmates are coming to school,

00:18:05.200 barely clothed. It's, it's, you are asking him to do something that is practically impossible

00:18:12.860 for him to do. It would require just, I'll tell you this, let me put it this way.

00:18:19.040 It would require more self-discipline and, um, maturity and moral courage than you probably

00:18:27.660 have right now as an adult. So you're asking him to exhibit a kind of control over his mind and his

00:18:38.300 faculties that you yourself do not exhibit. Um, so this is just a fact of biology.

00:18:50.780 Maybe you as a parent should teach your daughter

00:18:53.160 that her attempts to get attention are harmful, not only to herself, but also to her male classmates

00:19:02.420 who have almost no choice, but to give her the attention she's demanding. It's, it's like a

00:19:09.560 biological imperative that they're going to give that attention. And so she shouldn't be out there

00:19:15.680 seeking it. It's selfish. I mean, it is obviously selfish in more ways than one.

00:19:23.600 Just, just a man. I want you really, I mean, I don't think we empathize enough with boys in this

00:19:27.500 culture. Imagine what this culture is like for boys. And like I said, I remember how it was for

00:19:33.700 me when I was a kid, not all that long ago, and it was very difficult, but it's even it's, it's,

00:19:38.360 it's gotta be 10 times worse even now than it was for me. Um, you're a boy in 2018, there's porn

00:19:46.580 everywhere. There's sex all over the TV, there's sex all over the computer. Uh, and then he goes to

00:19:52.360 school and the girls are dressed like they're going to the club and he just can't escape everywhere.

00:19:57.140 Now he's got his hormones raging. He's going through puberty. He's I, and everywhere he

00:20:00.740 turns, he can't turn anywhere where it's not there. I mean, it's, it's, it's, do you have

00:20:05.140 any idea how difficult we've made it for a boy to be virtuous and chaste, let, let alone productive

00:20:12.200 in this society? And so the, the, the response of a lot of parents of girls is, ah, that's their

00:20:22.260 problem, whatever. I mean, how disgusting of an attitude is that? Why don't you have

00:20:28.120 a little bit of, I mean, look, just stop thinking about yourself for a second. And just, just

00:20:33.020 for a moment, if you can, and try to empathize with these boys, they didn't choose to be this

00:20:38.180 way. This, and they didn't choose to live in this culture either. That is constantly preying

00:20:42.520 upon their weakest impulses at a point in their life when they have not developed the maturity

00:20:49.340 and the discipline to, um, to overcome those impulses. As I said, as, you know, as adults,

00:20:59.780 we don't, we're not prepubescent boys anymore. So we don't have the same impulses. We don't

00:21:04.240 deal with the same, um, struggles that they do internally. But what I'm saying is the amount

00:21:12.600 of self-discipline that we are requiring boys to have in, in this culture, it is a greater

00:21:22.100 self-discipline than even most adults exhibit. Um, and that's not fair. You know, it's just

00:21:32.640 not fair. So I don't know. I mean, that's not the only reason why we should have the dress

00:21:38.840 coats, but that is a reason. I don't think it's an irrelevant reason. I think it's something

00:21:44.380 that we should all be concerned about. And maybe, I mean, we focus so much on the plight

00:21:49.900 of girls in society and what they go through and the societal expectations and everything.

00:21:54.020 And that's great to focus on that because that's an important issue. I have a daughter

00:21:56.840 as well. Um, so I'm worried about that, but we just neglect altogether. We just, we just

00:22:03.360 scoff what boys go through. We just scoff at it. We don't care. We're like, just let them

00:22:07.760 deal with it. It's their problem. Like I said, it's just, it's a disgusting attitude. It really

00:22:13.980 is. Uh, but that's maybe a topic for another day. I mean, I will talk about more about that

00:22:21.120 some other time. Um, but we'll leave it there for now. So thanks for watching everybody and

00:22:25.840 have a great day.

The Matt Walsh Show - April 11, 2018

Ep. 7 - Parents in America Need to Start Doing Some Actual Parenting

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