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Jordan Peterson Discovers Abraham's Family Strategy For World Conquest · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:03
  Hi, welcome to the Family Teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi-generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family.
• 0:22
  Hey, what's up, everybody? You're with my buddy Cameron. Cameron, what's up today? Hey, Jeremy. Yeah, I'm sure it's a lot warmer in Rancho Cucamonga. Mungo? Munga? Munga. Munga. It's a brisk 63 degrees. Oh, excellent. Man, yeah. We're in the 12-degree weather here, so...
• 0:44
  All right. Well, guys, I am wanting to spend a little time chatting with Cameron about some, some different clips from different things that are kind of spinning my brain this week. This is the first one, and I'm just going to play the audio and it's, um,
• 1:02
  It's behind a paywall, so it's on the Daily Wire website. But this is a conversation that Jordan Peterson had with Dr. Sarah Hill, and he does something at the very end of the, you know, again, there's most of it's available on YouTube, but this particular clip is not, but this was the one that really got me because he says something here that I'm like, oh, wow, this is interesting.
• 1:25
  because he starts to talk about Abraham. And this is, I think, making reference to the book that Peterson's writing called something like We Who Wrestle With God. It should be really interesting. So I want to play this, give a few comments, and then Cameron would love to get your thoughts here. So let's see here. Here we go.
• 1:43
  and it's an analysis, mostly analysis of biblical stories. And one of the stories that I take apart in some depth is the story of Abraham. Okay. Okay, now Abraham is presented as the father of nations. Okay, so the idea there is that the story of Abraham is an encapsulation in narrative form of a pattern of behavior that's most effective on the reproductive front across multiple generations. All right, so, and this is essentially the discussion between God and Abraham throughout the story is that
• 2:07
  Abraham makes the proper sacrifices, and God constantly says to him that if you make the proper sacrifices, if you give up what must be given up in the short term, then you will adopt a pattern of behavior that will ensure that your progeny survive across the long span. Okay, so one of the things that I see happening, and maybe this is a place where the eugenicist criticism of evolutionary biology still has a bit of purchase, is that...
• 2:26
  The evolutionary biologists tend to concentrate on sex as the cardinal element of reproduction. And as far as I'm concerned, that's a misapprehension among us within a species characterized by high investment strategy. Because sex is just the beginning of the reproductive enterprise. So I could say, well, maybe it's the roughest, toughest brute on the block whose genes are most likely to be passed down to generations. You know, he's the dominant caveman, and he's a top of the dominant hierarchy, and that's why his genes are transmitted. Or I could say something that's more in keeping with Francis de Waal's work on chimpanzees and say, no...
• 2:52
  What makes for reproductive fitness is a very complex ethos, part of which is a pattern of sexual behavior, but much of which is a pattern, let's say, of, for men, of taking care of their wives, of taking care of their children, of taking care of their wives and their children in a way that teaches their children to teach their, to take care of their wife and children and their grandchildren. So, like, it's a multi-generational ethos that's embedded in the actions and patterns of attention of a particular individual. So there's a morality in it. Right. Yeah, yeah. What's being trans, what's being selected for genetically is a multi-generational morality and not a pattern of sexual behavior. That's what it looks like to me. Right. No, I, I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm, I'm
• 3:21
  Ooh, I don't think I've ever heard anybody say that before. The word multi-generational. Yes. I thought family teams had a purchase on that. I know. He's like, he's moving into our territory. So he's making an interesting argument. And this is an epiphany that I had kind of more in general, but he's talking about it even at the kind of...
• 3:42
  even in the realm of evolutionary biology. He's talking to, I think, Dr. Hill and others. They were kind of unpacking Richard Dawkins' selfish gene and basically making the case that Abraham represents the most fit sort of description of what it looks like to really flourish. And so from an evolutionary perspective, people that see kind of everything through that lens, they're constantly talking about,
• 4:10
  that the only thing that really matters is sexual reproduction. Whatever creates the fitness to pass on your genes is what is selected for. And part of what Peterson is discovering is that that's actually way too simplistic, that what's actually being selected for is a father who thinks multigenerationally. In other words, a patriarch is the most fit species on the planet and that's
• 4:33
  And whoever has the longest term patriarchal vision is the most fit. And even from their evolutionary perspective, we don't have to adopt that perspective, but from that perspective, that's what it seems like we're designed to select for. And that's what's going to create the most fitness and the most – and it's going to create the most –
• 4:54
  flourishing, at least from the perspective of a biological organism over time. That's a really interesting thing to suggest. And then he kind of takes a step back and says, the Bible sort of predicted this when it called Abraham the father of nations. It selected the man who was the most...
• 5:11
  had the longest term vision, the most dynamic multi-generational vision, and set him up as the sort of this model, the Avram, the exalted father became Avraham, the father of many nations.
• 5:26
  Sometimes when I see people bump into themes that I believe deeply that are embedded in other disciplines like biology, it always shocks me, but it shouldn't, I guess. There's something certainly that crosses all of these different planes and makes sense of...
• 5:45
  This meta-narrative, this single story where the Bible is describing for us what God has designed the world to ultimately, how he's designed the world to create a flourishing mankind or flourishing humanity. And it does seem to be very focused on this, a patriarch with a very particular vision, and that is a multi-generational vision that ultimately then gives birth to not only a family, but becomes the father of nations.
• 6:15
  And so this is something I believe very deeply. I think the Bible teaches. I've never heard, you know, really taught within Christianity. It's taught to a certain degree within Judaism, and it's even taught somewhat within Islam. And this is something that I've been really trying to bring into Christianity, into the conversation amongst Christians, that we've totally misunderstood the character of Abraham in the Bible. And Peterson is backing his way into this interpretation through biology of all things. Yeah. Any thoughts about that? That's kind of blown my mind right now.
• 6:45
  It's so weird how Jordan Peterson comes to so many great and right conclusions with not all of the story available to him, it seems. I mean, it's available to him, but he hasn't embraced it, maybe. You know, we have an interesting opportunity to see this play out in practice.
• 7:01
  We can see the route that fathers take, how that leads to certain things in generations. So it's not like we're just proposing some theory and have no idea whether it's happened or not. We can just look around us and see where there's been an invested vision-driven father
• 7:16
  what that does. And at the other end of the extreme, you've got fatherlessness and the things that that leads to. And those fatherlessness, those fatherless men that are out there are sometimes some of the strongest, physically strongest, most biologically fit, and yet they see the least amount of flourishing. So I think that's a really interesting observation. He's coming at it. He's correctly...
• 7:39
  making it about a set of values more than it is just a bunch of biological features. Cause you've got this brain, you've got this ability to communicate and we've got the ability to like delay gratification. Yes. Yeah. Well, he, he has made the point before that when you say to your child, it's not whether or not you win or lose, but how you play the game.
• 7:57
  He said that actually is describing an ethic that says that what matters is the collection of games or becoming fit for playing this large kind of game.
• 8:13
  as opposed to how you play an individual game. If you use short-term strategies to basically cheat at a single game and you win through that strategy, you're essentially destroying your ability to win the larger game. You're winning the battle but losing the war. But I think he's now taking the further step, it seems to me, and he's beginning to define the game. And this is kind of where I landed, which is the game...
• 8:39
  that we're in is a multi-generational game. And so when you say it's not whether or not you win or lose, it's how you play the game. We need to be talking about what the game is. Like what is the game? And Abraham won the game. Like that's kind of a basic way to think about his character in the Bible, is that he wasn't a perfect man, he had lots of flaws.
• 9:01
  But he was focused on the right things. And he was focused on creating a covenant with God that established the nature of that covenant was towards his multigenerational family. And so I was just recently watching a video, and it was of a thousand musicians. Remember when we were at the big, in Caesarea, the big amphitheater?
• 9:27
  in Israel. I don't know if you saw this video where they had like, you saw that video where it's, it's, it's, I think it's called something like bring them home. Yeah. It's like a homeland concert and they, so it's just like, you know, lots of drones that are looking at these thousand musicians all singing in unison, like
• 9:47
  like drummers and a giant chorus, you know, choral group and in just, you know, tons of, of, uh, of different people playing instruments. Um, but as I watched that video, the thing that just struck me, uh, by it was these are members of one family like that. Could you imagine being a patriarch and then going to a concert, you know, some somehow, and, and, you know, a thousand, thousand years into the future where your descendants, um,
• 10:13
  All directly descended from you are all playing in unison at the same concert, like in all with one set of values and with one voice promoting something that you seeded into the family through your children and grandchildren. Like that's the story of Abraham.
• 10:33
  And it's playing out in front of us. And this is where it's so, to me, it's so valuable for every single father has got to spend a lot of time studying this man. He became, he's the Avram, the exalted father, the father of many nations, the Avraham. We have to understand what was unique about his perspective and adopt this perspective.
• 10:58
  And so if we want to see a flourishing family at any level, and I get so pumped when I see people coming to this really basic conclusion about how his character really fits within this larger story of the Bible.
• 11:13
  One aspect that I think we need to really make sure we emphasize is that he was chosen by God, empowered by God, blessed by God. And I think that more than just the set of principles that he applied, it was God's empowering, God's covenant with the people of Israel that made a lot of that possible. Even when they were wayward, I mean, they were doing a really bad job.
• 11:34
  I was just reading today in Judges. I'm like shaking my head, you know, what was going on in this same family. And so I know we're talking about Abraham, but it wasn't just a guy who got an idea. It was somebody who was set apart in a really particular way. And I know as Christians, we have access to that same God, that same empowering, even a more personal one in a lot of respects.
• 11:57
  So I think that that's really encouraging. If this were 2,500 years ago, we maybe would be having a different conversation. But yeah, kind of going back to the Jordan Peterson thing, taking and looking and saying delaying playing, well, I guess you said, what game are we playing that determines what winning actually means. Yeah.
• 12:16
  And, you know, we see it all around us. There are all these these usually we would say, OK, well, what story do you believe in? What story are you living? But really, what game are you playing is another one. If the game you're playing says that you win, if you have the most stuff when you die, then that's one game and you might think that you won. But so maybe the question is, what is the what is the most real game?
• 12:37
  What's the one that actually we were designed by God to play? And then what does winning look like in that sense? Right. Because I think that's a little bit clarifying. And I can then not feel bad when somebody else is doing better in a certain area than me. If it's not even the game that I'm trying to play.
• 12:53
  Yeah. And that's why I think it's so critical to go back to Genesis 1, when he said, be fruitful, multiply, fail, subdue, rule. He sort of defined what he was creating humanity for. This is the project I'm giving you. And then in the Great Commission, Jesus, similarly, go and make disciples of all nations. Basically, both are the same commission to be fruitful, multiply. And there's different ways to do it. There's a biological way to do that. And there's a spiritual way to do that.
• 13:19
  And that our job is to have this very long-term vision towards that. I think the reason why this breaks down in our society is because if I'm not alive to see the fruit, then it doesn't matter. There's an automatic discounting of that fruit. And one of the things that really blew my mind when I read it was in John, there was a moment where Jesus is talking to some Jewish people who were debating with him, and he says to them that...
• 13:44
  basically challenges their identity as children of Abraham. And they go back and forth. And Jesus then turns around and says to them towards the end of, of this debate, Abraham saw my day and was glad. And they're like, what are you talking about?
• 14:00
  And so this question as to whether or not you get to see the fruit of your multi-generational family after you die, we know there was one man, according to the Bible, that actually did see it. That was Abraham. He saw the ultimate result of the fruit of his family. It didn't end with his death. We know that, of course, through the resurrection, but to say that Abraham saw Jesus and was glad, like he had an emotional response
• 14:29
  to having seen the ultimate fulfillment of the promise God made to Abraham in Genesis 12 in the sending of the Messiah to bless all the families of the earth. So I think that this is part of the reason why we're confused about what game we're playing. Because if it seems like with my death, I can only invest in the things that I'm going to get to personally enjoy as an individual and during my lifetime, then it really precludes focusing on building a multi-generational family.
• 14:56
  Why not? Just if that's the time horizon, then why focus on the kinds of things that would really be hugely beneficial to the world and very much honoring my allegiance and my walk with God through the way that I'm living and raising my family. If it's going to mostly, the fruit's mostly going to exist 150 years from now when I'm dead or 200 or 500 or a thousand years from now.
• 15:24
  And I think Abraham is the answer to that question. And we need to decide if we have the faith to believe what Abraham believed. And that's part of the faith that we're believing. I think oftentimes when we think about Abraham being the man of faith, we think about that primarily as almost exclusively the kind of faith in what Jesus or the Lamb came to bring in terms of salvation.
• 15:46
  But Hebrews 11 says that he was looking forward to a city, like that he saw this city populated with his descendants and that he wanted to put all, he lived his whole life in tents. He was willing to sacrifice a lot of things in his life to get this result that he's,
• 16:05
  really is the, uh, the existence of his multi-generational family in, in this, um, future realm. And that's why when I was looking at that video of the Caesarea or anytime I'm in Israel, I, I just, I feel like it's so strange that he's the father of this nation that exists in 20, 24. It's just absolutely mind blowing that it worked and that we don't just have a historic record of how Abraham thought four or 5,000 years ago, but we have, we can see it today.
• 16:36
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• 16:59
  Yeah, what do you think the hurdles are to adopting that sort of mindset? Because it's so countercultural. It's so foreign to not just a Western mind, but especially maybe even an American mind. It seems to be a dominant thing the further removed we are from those types of cultures. And so what are the hurdles that keep people from embracing this sort of thing?
• 17:22
  Yeah. Well, I think the first one is you have to decide the scope of time that you're living for. Like when we say, what is the game? You know, we're trying to win the collection of all the games or it's not how, whether or not you want to lose this one game, but how you play the larger game. What is the larger game? And I think that when we say things like, what do you want to be when you grow up? Or like there's a thousand messages that we give kids and that we all live and breathe, you know, through marketing and through education that really...
• 17:50
  answer the question that the game is individual fulfillment at some level in this life while you're still here. And I think Christians by and large have bought that idea. We believe, we agree. Yeah. It's like whatever, you know, it does Christianity. And this is what's so appalling in some level with like expressions of the church that attempts to maximize individual fulfillment as their strategy for how to grow or, you know, how to grow.
• 18:16
  how to even describe the discipleship process of spiritual maturity. That is not it. And this is really a problem because we have divine revelation. Again, I think this is where Abraham is so important. And when the New Testament in Galatians says to Gentiles, you too are children of Abraham,
• 18:36
  Paul is really making the case over and over again in the New Testament authors when they do make those kinds of statements when Jesus says, you're not children of Abraham. It's really saying that the children of Abraham are people who really have decided to believe in the Abrahamic vision of reality, that you make a covenant with God for the sake of your multi-generational family. That's the Abrahamic vision, and that's the game. And you first establish that connection with God, and you can...
• 19:06
  Think about multi-generational family from the spiritual lens now on this side of the cross. This is kind of where Paul saw himself as a father of churches, a father of the men he was discipling. Or you can think about yourself as the father or mother of children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren biologically.
• 19:22
  I think both are very legitimate and critical parts of what it means to have a New Testament kind of faith, but it is about children. And that's really a simple way to really zero in on whether or not you agree with Abraham or you've bought into a...
• 19:38
  modern Western individualistic vision is, is really to the degree to which you value children, spiritual and biological children. And, you know, there's no question that, that pouring your life out for, for disciples that you're making in the kingdom or for those you are.
• 19:54
  you know, having in your own family, that comes at a huge cost to you as an individual. And so it's interesting that, you know, part of the reality is that as you live this out, as you decide to maximize the number of children that you can raise, it's simultaneously causing you to have these same shifts of perspective. You're starting to think less about yourself as an individual. You're starting to think more about,
• 20:18
  Okay, what is life going to look like 100 years from now, 200 years from now? What do I have to do to set things up for my grandchildren, my great-grandchildren? Your whole heart and your whole soul starts to focus on what God is really focused on, and that is how to ultimately bless all the families of the world, to rescue these families and to
• 20:37
  bring them all into his family. And, and this, you know, you, you are given this weird little slot of time, uh, where you are stewarding your little branch of the family, but. You know, that that's the, that's the, the nature of the game. And I think that this was really well known in the first century and really confused, um, now in, in our culture and, and this, and when I was living in the middle East and, you know, I know you've, you've had, you know, your experiences with.
• 21:05
  like Iranian culture, you know, from your family background, there are a lot of cultures who still think this way. In fact, most, I think that, I think the world's actually going to become increasingly, it's going to move this direction because you're going to basically have these two civilizations. One that is going to have a plummeting birth rate that doesn't really...
• 21:23
  think like Abraham. And so they're going to die out in a almost exponential way in the next hundred years. And what's going to be left are those people who have these durable, multi-generational vision for their family, durable in that it successfully gets passed to their children and grandchildren, great-grandchildren to actually value having and maximizing their ability to have
• 21:44
  and raise children. And I think the world is going to, I think if you were to somehow go 100, 200 years in the future, you're going to see this intense number of almost tribes of people who have this durable multi-generational vision. And it's going to become obvious once again, that Abraham's vision is the only
• 22:10
  the only durable vision that will create this kind of flourishing. And if you don't do that, then there's a biological reality, like Peterson's pointing out that you will die off and that, that everything that God's designed is, is really pointing us towards this vision. So, yeah, there's, there's a lot there. Like this is definitely the, this, I think the cutting edge of, of, of where, you know, my thinking is often, is often at like trying to envision what,
• 22:39
  What do those groupings look like? Are we moving? How do we move more of the Christian community towards that vision? And how do we somehow overcome these short-term mind viruses that are parasitically invading the church and in the Christian community that are coming in from the secular world and essentially sterilizing everything that we're doing from a lack of discipleship to a lack of...
• 23:08
  child bearing and raising. All right. I got another clip I want to play. And so I'll show you this one here. So I spent a lot of time thinking through this gender pay gap issue. And I was just kind of blown away. I'll play just a little part of this clip. Something that occurred this week in Australia.
• 23:31
  that I thought was really important to note. I'll describe what's happening here and play a little bit. This goes on for about eight minutes. I don't wanna play the whole thing, but this is I think a really important thing for us to be aware of that's happening. The agency reports a workplace gender pay gap comparing male full-time employees and female full-time employees, but male full-time employees work longer hours on average than female full-time.
• 24:00
  employees and the agency doesn't account for this when reporting a workplace gender pay gap. Using ABS data on employee earnings and hours, the gender pay gap as at May 2016 was 15.7%. It is a survey of employees, that information from the ABS, it's not a census and it's only conducted every two years. They only collect the data every day.
• 24:29
  A full-time employee works longer hours than a female full-time employee? Not directly, no. You don't?
• 24:36
  But we annualise the part-time hours and those that have worked full-time but for part of the year. So that way, because at the moment what I can tell you is women work part-time at three times the rate of men. So by annualising it we are looking at a more realistic... So you base it on annual salary. Yeah. What about if you did it on an hourly rate? What would be the gender hourly pay gap? We don't have that data, Senator. You don't have that data? No, because we are...
• 25:05
  who would find it acceptable that a woman, irrespective of how many hours she's working in the day, if she's doing the same amount of work as a man, or the same job as a man, I'm sorry, was paid any less on the basis that she's a woman. I can't think of any men who would support that. And yet, because you're not looking at hours, we don't know whether that's occurring or not. Am I right there?
• 25:32
  Senator, I think at this stage, as I've said to you, we are unable to collect and analyse that data. There are other countries, of course, that do do that.
• 25:43
  So, oh man. So this is, this is kind of a hot button one for me, because this is something I've been very suspicious about that. That's so much of the discussion around the gender pay gap is, is one in which you are leaving out essential variables that, that are going to be constantly
• 26:03
  impacting those numbers from the perspective of particularly fathers and mothers. And this is what he was pointing out as well, is that if men, if men choose to work more hours than women, then they're going to, and you're annualizing their salaries, and you're not taking consideration the greater number of hours, then
• 26:24
  then you're leaving out a variable that is essential for determining if there's a gap. You have to control for variables like time worked, especially for hourly employees. They weren't even controlling for that. So this led me to write some things. I'll read to you one of the things that I was writing about this as I've been trying to understand the difference and what the implications are. So I just wrote, we need to widen the gender pay gap. There are two trends every society should promote that will increase the gap.
• 26:54
  One, mothers choosing to forego promotions or overtime to be more present with her children. Two, fathers choosing to pursue promotions or overtime to provide enough money so that his wife can spend less time at work and more time with their children. Millions of mothers and fathers have made the above choices for these reasons. Yet when the pay gap is calculated, these kinds of variables are routinely ignored. And as long as they are, we need to increase the pay gap and celebrate it. So the pay gap could actually be evidence.
• 27:21
  that a father is sacrificing for his wife to stay at home. The pay gap could be the result of mothers who are choosing to forego overtime or promotions or working extra hours in a salary job and then impacting her performance in order for her to be more present with her children. If you don't control for these variables,
• 27:39
  then you're going to create a situation where we are seeing discrimination where it doesn't exist. And then we begin to socially engineer a society in which it's less likely that mothers are going to have the capability to spend more time with their children or will engineer a society in which fathers who want to make major sacrifices so that their wives can be more present and less focused on their career and more focused on the home, you're going to make it more difficult for those fathers to make enough money for his wife to stay home. Like these are...
• 28:09
  Such common scenarios that occur, and they're so advantageous for the family. And so once we start to assume that what's happening is discrimination, we start to discriminate actively against these kinds of traditional families.
• 28:24
  that are actually prioritizing their children. And this is the part of it that just kind of drives me crazy. So, and just to hear the Senator in Australia asking the most basic questions about what variables they're controlling to ensure that what they're actually seeing in the data is discrimination. And to discover that they're basing their policy decisions as a country on data that doesn't control for the most basic variables. Yeah.
• 28:50
  It's just so shocking, but so typical, I think, of we're always in search of some kind of piece of data that's going to reinforce discrimination we assume exists. And so we don't actually ensure that the data is telling us what we're assuming it does. And then policies are passed that make life so much harder on families when we do this. This is why I want to bring, I don't know what that stirs up anything for you, Cameron, but this one gets me going.
• 29:18
  Well, I think it's clear that it is all just sexism. You're convinced. No, I'm convinced by her. Her facts were irrefutable. Yes. You know, I think as somebody who is just naturally pretty skeptical, I'm always asking and I find just a follow-up question in my mind. And so often, especially with these hot button issues, I find myself so left without satisfaction that,
• 29:42
  Because they don't answer the most basic follow-up question that should be asked, which is, you know, on any of these variables, it's like, okay, let's say gun deaths, they say, or gun violence. Okay. Well, where is this happening? Who is doing this? You know, when they talk about crimes, I mean, there are all of these things where if you can just, you just cherry pick some fact because you want to, it seems like want to convince yourself or you're, you're trying to meet some sort of objective for me, it just smacks of,
• 30:10
  total dishonesty. And it makes me very suspicious of anything else that person wants to put forward. Not that whatever they say wouldn't be true otherwise, but it just puts me even further on guard because it seems like the basic level of critical thinking would have you ask some follow-up question such as,
• 30:27
  Well, can you tell us some qualitative differences? I mean, he wasn't even asking for that. He was asking for quantitative differences. So that's a little bit hard. I hadn't considered the idea that, first of all, using this very faulty thinking to accomplish some sort of supposed aim would lead to creating less opportunities for men.
• 30:47
  and pushing women into further opportunities. It almost, you end up strangling on both ends of it. There's less flourishing on both ends of it, both mothers and fathers. And as a result, families and kids and their own opportunities.
• 31:00
  Yes. Yeah. And that's, that's what really got me was that I was listening to, it was a secular liberal person who was really deep in the data of the gender pay gap. And he made a statement that kind of shocked me. He said, he said the gender pay gap that we have is not a pay gap between men and women, but between mothers and fathers.
• 31:21
  I was like, tell me more. He basically said that fathers are willing to work a lot of hours to provide for their family in ways in which mothers are not willing because they want to be more present with their children. And that if you control for fathers and mothers...
• 31:38
  If you just look at a single man or a single woman, then there are so many scenarios in which the pay gap either goes to zero or there's a pay gap sometimes even in favor of women. But if you add fathers in the mix, then you get this gap that begins to emerge. And that seems like utterly predictable to me.
• 32:00
  I mean, every man I know is constantly thinking about how to provide more for his family. And if that requires him to make major sacrifices, then there's a divide and conquer scenario in the family in which he will ask his wife to bear more responsibility at home so that he can provide more through his work. Now, that doesn't happen 100% of the time, but it happens...
• 32:22
  much more frequently than the reverse, right? And because of that frequency, you're going to see a gender pay gap emerge. And I was interacting with somebody on LinkedIn on this topic. And she said that the gender pay gap exists within salaried positions and salaried positions have, you know, they...
• 32:43
  they automatically control for hours because they're not actually trying to work hourly. So overtime or things like that are not calculated. And therefore, you should be able to see a gender pay gap if it's discrimination against women by looking at salary positions.
• 33:02
  And, you know, I immediately, you know, wrote back to her. It's like, I have managed many people in salaried positions and choosing to work more hours is even a greater variable when it comes to promotions and performance in those situations. And so if you have a woman who's, let's say the job, you know, requires 35 or 40 hours a week, but you have a man who's desperate to get a raise and a promotion and he's, so he's working 60 hours a week.
• 33:30
  And a counterpart who's a woman and a mother does not want to make those sacrifices, chooses to stay home. You're going to see a gender pay gap quickly emerge between that man and that woman, not because of discrimination, but because he's working more hours. And so we're traveling. We're doing more dangerous things or whatever. Right.
• 33:49
  Exactly. Like you have to control for those variables. And those variables are so frequently different between men and women. Men on average are more competitive than women. Men on average are much more status conscious when it comes to careers than women. And so they're willing to make a lot of different sacrifices. And then you have just the traditional scenario where a man is desperate to try to help his wife get out of her work situation.
• 34:16
  in order for her to spend more time at home and being a mother. All of these situations are going to create a gender pay gap that has nothing to do with discrimination. It has to do with the free choices of mothers and fathers to raise a certain kind of family. But when we assume that everyone's an individual within the workplace and nobody's a mother or father, nobody's bringing those identities into the workplace and it's not impacting the way they work, it's not impacting kind of these big macro identities.
• 34:38
  data trends, then you're going to get all kinds of signals back that, that look like discrimination that are just mothers and fathers acting like mothers and fathers in a different context. Um, and this is, this is where I think if we don't talk about mothering and fathering and the impact that it has on our identities outside of the home and, and our, our, looking at that and even promoting it, that's part of what I was trying to suggest is that because I'm, I'm somebody who actually thinks the family's more important than work.
• 35:07
  I mean, I care way more about my kids and my family than I do any work situation. Then you're going to see me make all kinds of decisions that are attempting to figure out how to maximize things on behalf of my family. And so I'm bringing my fatherhood identity into every decision I make in the workplace.
• 35:24
  And, and I want more men to do that. But women do that more intuitively and more aggressively than men. And, and I think that's a good thing. But it does mean that, and again, they're, they're looking at different trade-offs and there are more men who are concerned about and are really fighting for their wives to get to spend more time at home with the kids. Like that, those are the women oftentimes in these scenarios that are overlooked. You know, you're, you're looking at a scenario where a man's willing to make major sacrifices.
• 35:52
  And you imagine he's an individual competing against another woman who's an individual. And so, you know, if he's willing to work another 10 or 15 or 20 hours a week or travel or do something more dangerous, like you said, and take more risks or handle more rejection or whatever that looks like to increase his performance. And he's doing that in order to get a raise so that his wife can work less hours. That should be celebrated. And if a woman is saying to herself, because she's a mother or she's single and she doesn't need...
• 36:17
  to take those kinds of risks, isn't driven for those same reasons. That's totally fine. Like they should, but that's gonna result in a pay gap is the basic reality. And the pay gap is not based on, you know, a manager who says, oh, I think men are more valuable.
• 36:32
  It's this particular individual man is more valuable because he's willing to make sacrifices that this individual woman is not willing to make. And if there's another man who's not willing to make those sacrifices, he's going to get paid less as well. So if there is discrimination like that going on that we need to be controlling for, that we need to make sure we have data that actually reflects that properly. We find the places where that discrimination is happening and make sure that we are getting rid of that discrimination. I'm not in favor of discrimination.
• 36:59
  mothers and fathers making free choices and for us not to create policy decisions that, that force men and women, mothers and fathers in particular, um, into situations where, where it's going to hurt their families, um, because we're assuming discrimination exists where it doesn't. I've never heard of, of doing of, of the discrimination in this case, quote unquote, or the pay gap being a positive thing because of the family side. You know, one, one thing that I sometimes wonder what the aim is here,
• 37:29
  point, you hear any of these points made in just any bit of context, it seems to deflate it entirely. And so I wonder why this conversation is still even ongoing, but I think it's a good one to have. Yes. Yeah, I agree. Well, last thing I wanted to, I wanted to share. So this is a something that I was interacting with around on Twitter, something I put out there and I wanted to get your thoughts as I'm
• 37:50
  This has really been a big part of our lives. So basically just, I said, see schools as an optional tool to use carefully, not as a system that magically allows you to abdicate your responsibility to educate your kids. So schools are an optional tool to utilize. It's a tool in the hands of a family, of fathers and mothers.
• 38:09
  It's not a system that allows you to abdicate your responsibility to educate your children. And so I would say that this is one of the things that's very, very tricky about when the government gets involved in anything. Is that, you know, usually the first generation, let's say, you know, there were no public schools. And so every family was constantly thinking about how do we, how do we, can we afford to send any of our kids to an educational institution? Should we, you know, team up with other families and start some kind of co-op in order to educate our children? Yeah.
• 38:39
  And then the government, you know, comes in and says, oh, well, we'll, we'll help. We'll put some money. We'll, we'll put up a school and we'll make this easier for you. And we'll create a little more equality for those families who might not have a chance to do that. Then all of a sudden the families that were taking responsibility for this, they, they over generations, just their mindset shifts to, oh, education is the government's responsibility. And, and so that shift over generations, because the government is being quote unquote, you
• 39:07
  with its citizens. Of course, anytime you say the government's being generous, you're assuming, of course, they're taking away from other people that the government doesn't make anything. So it's being generous with somebody else's money. But that may be a good policy in terms of it creates a lot of equality, creates a lot of opportunity. It definitely helps create more equality of opportunity
• 39:25
  for people. And so we may decide as a society to do that. But there's a perverse byproduct. There is an unintended consequence that I just really think that parents need to think about. And that is, they start thinking about education as a system that the government controls as opposed to an element of family building.
• 39:49
  And so if you are looking at schools and saying, okay, there are tools that we might use, there's other tools that we can use. I just really like framing all of education as the family's responsibility. And then we have access to these tools. One of those tools is a public school system. Another tool could be homeschool co-ops.
• 40:12
  Another tool could be tutoring. Another tool could be online programs. And all these tools are at the, are, are, are really in the hands of families, but the family should, should always put themselves in the perspective of the sort of the superintendent or the one who's actually deciding which for which seasons, which children should utilize, which tools to maximize the goals that they have for those children and for that family. So, yeah, I'm curious what, how you guys have thought about this topic.
• 40:39
  We thought about it a lot. I mean, with our five kids, we've chosen homeschool from the start. And so that kind of forces us to be really attentive to the different options that are available and truly viewing those things over the years as different tools. We've shifted. We haven't stuck with one curriculum or one approach. We've used co-ops. We've used kind of part time school, private school. We've done different curriculums and truly have viewed those differently.
• 41:06
  through the lens of tools like, okay, for this next season, what do we think would be most beneficial for this kid? You know, what kind of critical thinking is that program going to, you know, embody? And so I think there is that cultural pressure that makes public school just the default setting where you go, this is what you do, because it's so prevalent.
• 41:26
  COVID changed that, that we've seen that even in our own homeschool co-ops and other conversations we've had. There have been a lot of people outside of the church, because that's kind of traditionally been a bane feeder for homeschool, but people who just saw the public school thing blow up, their kids were at home, they didn't like how it was going. So they've kind of stepped into the driver's seat and are making those decisions and having their kids join these different co-ops and are homeschooling on their own, which is really surprising because that's a really new thing. And we've seen it emerge after this pandemic.
• 41:55
  But I think there's an element of once parents are sitting there seeing sometimes the quality of the education that was or wasn't coming across the screen, they're sitting in the room and they kind of get a front row seat to this. They thought this isn't actually that great in some cases. And I know it was a difficult situation, but they decided to employ different tools and have set now put themselves in the driver's seat and are at least more aware of the decisions that they're making.
• 42:23
  You know, I know that on the back of the conversation we just had with the pay gap and that, you know, a lot of families orient themselves. The more that a mom has to work and the more that a dad has to work, that means that you either have to have free or very low cost options in some cases, especially in an expensive place like California. And so that creates a lot of pressure as well to have kids just go the default. You wouldn't even think twice about it because what other options could we have? What else could we do besides pay?
• 42:51
  send them to the state school. That's just, it's very obvious that that is the solution because what else could we even potentially do?
• 42:58
  Yeah. Yeah. And I feel like when families are backed into a corner like that, they need to, alarm bells should be going off all over the place. And they often aren't. And the alarm bells are what happens when this school system is not in the best interest of our children? What happens if this child is being bullied or this child is, there's an educational culture within that school that is really not serving this child well, or,
• 43:21
  or there's values that are being passed on to this child that they're adopting that are, going back to our first conversation, really destructive of our whole family's multi-generational vision. If they're getting infected by idea viruses that will destroy our family's future. A lot of families that have no other recourse, but to say, no, you got to stick it out. We have no other options. We can't think about education any other way. That to me is the
• 43:50
  And I agree with you that there's a lot of families that find themselves in that circumstance. However, I think that they, instead of capitulating to it and saying, okay, that's normal. Like, I mean, of course, yeah, we all send our kids to school. We all just kind of bear the reality of that while we all pursue our individual lives. Man, that seems incredibly dangerous to me.
• 44:13
  Like I would never want to be satisfied with that situation because it's just a matter of time before that school does not serve the needs of your family, the values of your family well. And at that point you are stuck, right? You're stuck literally sending your children to a situation that is actively eroding what you believe God has for your family or your family's future.
• 44:41
  And you're participating because you've abdicated that responsibility. And the first step out of that abdication to me is to see the, is not to assume that the whole problem of education is solved by a single system, but to say that families are handed these tools. And we've used public schools about 20% of the time for our kids. And every time our kids were engaged in a,
• 45:08
  in a role than a public school, you know, it was a constant thing that we were watching and to see does, does this actually serve the, the goals and values of our family. And there were multiple times in the middle of school year where we'll pull our kids out because we, we felt like it wasn't other times they stayed in through the whole school year because we felt like it was really positive and they were learning a lot and they were having good interactions.
• 45:31
  I was super impressed with some of the teachers and just, it all, it all felt like it fit well with our family's values, but we weren't doing it because we were stuck. We were doing it because we thought that was the right tool for the right kid at the right time. So I just, I really want people to reframe the whole educational, the whole idea of educating children around tools and not systems. That's kind of my, my hope. Isn't, isn't one element with this that most families are not even asking the quality questions.
• 46:00
  In other words, they go, well, that's just how it is. Okay, maybe you'll have a better opportunity next semester. You're talking in a way that's a lot more intentional and a lot more focused on using it as a tool. Is this tool working or isn't it? Is this serving or isn't it? But I think there's an element of not even considering whether or not it serves
• 46:18
  your family. And on the other end of it, one real downside, it seems like it's either public school or an entirely different system because in a public school, a major downside to it is you have no agency or you have very little agency. If you don't like it, what incentive does the school have to change anything? Right.
• 46:37
  There's no you can't if you pull your kid, where are you going to pull your kid? They're still going to get funding. It's not like a private school that has to kind of do. So I know there's like school voucher stuff kind of speaks to this in some ways and can improve that as a tool. I can see that as actually being if in the locales of that starts passing, I see that being a very powerful tool in the belt of families who are switched on and maybe feel otherwise stuck. So I think.
• 47:00
  advocating for that, whoever's listening to this, advocate for that in your area, because that really probably helps out the most families who have no other option, but to be in a public school setting.
• 47:09
  Yeah, I would say that there's two grand ideas that sound like exist around how to think about public funding of education. One is really typified by the voucher idea and the other is by the teachers unions. And I have great concern about the second because I do think that there is a real misalignment of incentives within a teacher's union to really balance the needs of the child.
• 47:39
  And the thing that's interesting about vouchers is that I don't think that the children should be in charge. I don't think the teacher should be in charge. And I don't think some kind of, you know, I don't think a department of education should be in charge. I think that parents should be in charge. And that's where I do agree that vouchers do make the most sense. They create that opportunity. And, um, and so any parent who has, you know, very little time or very little resources to really think about this.
• 48:04
  to suddenly give that parent the option to utilize those vouchers and pull their child from an underperforming school that's been inundated with problems that are created by an overpowerful teacher's union, that would really transform the ability for these schools to evolve. And hopefully would also create an incentive where teachers are being paid
• 48:30
  a lot more when they're overperforming. Um, and, and we need those incentives that exist everywhere else, but tend to disappear within these kinds of government institutions. Cool. Well, Cameron, thanks so much for chatting with me today. I love getting just a process, just the, uh, the, the very top of mind, uh, fatherhood, uh, topics that, that are, uh, that are bubbling up. So thanks for. And spicy ones today too. That's right. Always are awesome. Have a good day.
• 48:59
  Thank you for listening to the Family Teams podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend. To stay up to date with our events, new content, and products, you can follow us on Facebook and Instagram at Family Teams.