Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 75 | Raising a Son in Today's Culture

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Ep. 75 | Raising a Son in Today's Culture · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  Because you live, I will never die, because a part of me lives on in you. Hey guys, welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood Podcast. I'm your co-host, Jeff Bethke, along with my friend and mentor, Jeremy Pryor. Join us Monday through Friday as we chat about quick tips, skills, and ways to help equip you on your journey as a father to build your multi-generational family team on mission. Stay tuned.
• 0:31
  What's up, guys? Welcome to the 5-Minute Fatherhood. Have you ever had that feeling that, man, I really, really would love to raise a son? I'd love to have a son. And I think sometimes, you know, in this culture where we're all getting more and more sensitive to...
• 0:46
  any inequality within gender, I think that we can sort of crush this kind of desire. But there's something really natural about this desire, and there is so many amazing things about daughters, and we're going to have full podcasts on, and we have—
• 1:01
  on the incredible gift it is to raise a daughter. But we're not afraid to wade into the fact that these are different kind of experiences for us as dads. And a lot of times dads do experience this desire to want to have a son. Where does that come from? And are there any clues to that? Is that something you should resist? And probably one of my favorite American authors of all time, John Steinbeck, actually wrote a little piece on this in one of his books. He's a legend.
• 1:26
  And I want to read this to you because I think he just, he sort of is circling this idea in a really interesting way. He says, why do men like me want sons? He wondered. This is one of the characters in his book. It must be because they hope in their poor beaten souls that these new men who are their blood will do the things that they were not strong enough, nor wise enough, nor brave enough to do. It is rather like another chance at life.
• 1:56
  And I really, that, there's something, I don't know if you feel it, that kind of like, if you hear something like that, it might rise up from some deep place within you. I remember the first time I really thought about this idea was I was in Jerusalem at a bar mitzvah, and I watched a grandfather. This is such a cool experience. We weren't even a part of the bar mitzvah. We just were going to a restaurant, and there was probably 200 people, most of them from America, all flew in for this one 13-year-old boy's bar mitzvah.
• 2:24
  And at probably the pinnacle of—we're just overhearing what was happening—the grandfather of this young 13-year-old boy puts his hand on his grandson, and he recites this incredible poem over him. And I'll never forget the last words of the poem. It says something like, "'Because you live, I will never die, because a part of me lives on in you.'"
• 2:47
  And when he said that, I was like, you know, one of those teaching cultures that just gets it. So this is what's going on inside of us. God has given us the gift of really living on our piercing into the future through our children. And there is a unique experience of that that you get to have through a daughter and a unique experience you get to have of that through a son. And I love what Steinbeck says here.
• 3:14
  Yeah, you know, it's really funny and is how that line you just said of that prayer, which is incredible. I feel like we tend culturally in the West to be okay with that in like movies or superhero stories or something like that of kind of like when someone's dying, like, oh, I'll live on forever with you or in you.
• 3:29
  But it's because we're so individualistic in our own culture, we don't actually take that into real life. When it's like that actually should be a real life thing, like that you are holding your entire generational legacy inside of you. And there is obviously a mixture of blessing and curse in there. But specifically, if you've come from someone who is, you know, like a patriarch of that nature that says that a vision of love, of blessing, man, what a gift. What?
• 3:54
  What a gift. And what would it look like for us to actually not shy away from that, thinking we're some blank slate, but we're actually not a blank slate. And we can actually live into our story of that generational story that's inside of us. And man, I absolutely love that. And then I think that plays and tells and goes the direction of then also why not just having a daughter is important and a blessing, but then why also.
• 4:15
  having a son has that particular blessing as well. And what a picture. And I think I'll end with even saying that one more time, because it was so good because you live, I will never die. He said, because a part of me lives on in you. So dads take that with you today.
• 4:29
  Hey guys, we know it's really challenging to try to build your family team when all the tools you've grown up with or seen essentially are aimed at only helping develop family members as a collection of individuals. That's why we launched familyteams.com, where you can find all the tools we've developed with tons of resources at different price points, free courses, videos, writings, etc. that help you build up and transform you and your family into a multi-generational team on mission. Check out all the resources we have over at familyteams.com.