Latest / The Family Teams Podcast / Ep. 67 | Dads and the War on Motherhood

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Ep. 67 | Dads and the War on Motherhood · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  That is the casualty when we make the ultimate value or identity of a girl, her ability to compete and beat other boys.
• 0:14
  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. Stay tuned.
• 0:35
  What's up, guys? Jeff and Jeremy here, back with another episode of 5-Minute Fatherhood. Today's going to be a fun discussion, and at the end of the day, guys, know this is one of those things we're probably not going to solve in five minutes, but we definitely want to start the discussion in five minutes, and excited to hear you guys' thoughts. This one was an email from the community, and I don't want to read the exact...
• 0:53
  The whole long email, but for length purposes, it was basically talking about gender, raising daughters. And the question boiled down to what he said was, how can we make sure to raise daughters who are empowered, independent, equal, confident, but also have a firmly rooted sense of being a female person?
• 1:08
  and a woman of God. And then he talks about how he's tried to work on that with his daughters and stuff. But I've heard a version of this question a lot, and even one that I think we all have to wrestle with in this culture, which is how can you kind of lean into maybe some of the blessings you feel like culture is affording to us, specifically to women, with clearly also some very darker parts in regards to erasing of gender,
• 1:32
  you know, the blurring of lines and all those different things. So Jeremy, how would you kind of sit in that pocket of addressing that question while empowering, while not enabling essentially the lies of culture? Yeah, this is a tough one. And there's a few things that Aaron wrote to us. I love this email. He worded it really well. He said, what does it mean to raise a daughter and to raise a girl in today's environment, specifically in today's culture of equality, gender neutrality, and the erasing of lines between genders?
• 1:59
  How do we raise daughters who are empowered, independent, equal, and confident, but are also having a firmly rooted sense of being a female and a woman of God? At the end of the email, he just says, in summary, I've always thought that raising a daughter to be equal to boys was the ultimate goal, but am I missing a step by ensuring that she clearly understands the awesomeness of being a woman? I love this question. So he did word that really, really good. And I think has a couple of different distinctions in there, which like, I would say definitely not the ultimate goal, but that's that, you know, or whatever. Yeah. So go ahead.
• 2:29
  Yeah, no, it's a tough, this is really interesting. And this is a question that the entire culture is asking right now. How do we help girls? And really, I like the way he described the ultimate goal. There is an ultimate goal right now. The culture's ultimate goal is how do we make sure girls know that they're equal to boys? And so almost, I don't know, Jeff, like almost 50%, I'm not even sure that's an exaggeration, of the Super Bowl commercials this year were about girl power or some kind of,
• 2:57
  narrative around a girl that was really rising and always in opposition or directly like competing with a boy. And even Captain Marvel in some sense, which I think is actually a great film and is awesome, but there's tones there for sure. Yeah. This is the cultural ethos of the conversation we want to have right now.
• 3:17
  Yes. And so there's a lot of good stuff going on there. I mean, look, I'm raising four daughters. They're all amazing. They're all strong. They're all black belts. Don't mess with them. They can compete with boys. My daughter, Sydney, she's 15. She just got first place in a speech and debate tournament. She debated these two six-foot seniors, and I watched her and her partner take them down. It's super fun to watch your daughter.
• 3:40
  do amazing things, and my daughters are amazing. I love them. I love their strength. But one of the things that I really want to say to Aaron, because I love his question, is that there is an overreaction going on right now in the culture. There's an obsession with, and the problem isn't so much whether or not girls can do what boys can do,
• 3:58
  The problem is that this is being, and I love his word, ultimate. This is considered the main way in which a girl should see her life, her identity is how well does she do at competing with men? I do not want my daughters to be obsessed with that question as the ultimate goal. The reason that the massive casualty if that becomes the ultimate goal, and the casualty is motherhood.
• 4:25
  I want my daughters to know and love the idea of motherhood. Motherhood is such an incredible thing. And if you are obsessed with competing with boys, one of the very subtle things that's going to begin to happen to you as a girl is you are going to begin to devalue the role of the mother because you're not competing with boys when it comes to motherhood. Motherhood is its own challenge and its own identity and...
• 4:49
  and its own opportunity and its own responsibility. And it's such an incredibly high call. And that is the casualty when we make the ultimate value or identity of a girl, her ability to compete and beat other boys. And so I'm really disturbed by this trend as being so rising to the point of being the ultimate thing that we need to talk about.
• 5:13
  Yeah, I think one of the biggest things we have to be careful on is the minute any type of clear lines that scripture seems to be drawing in regards to distinction. When we try to start to erase those, I feel like, you know, like because we can pastorally talk about what exactly that means, but it's pretty clear on the 30,000 foot level that there's gender distinction and that there's role distinction. And if and so you have to if we can't even kind of start on square one, then that's when I think we our culture wants to actually erase the distinction.
• 5:39
  And so we can talk again practically what that looks like, but I will fully say that like, yeah, the erasing of distinction is detrimental and going to take us to a very, very bad place in my opinion. And so, and another thing, and this plays out in a million different ways, right? I think like even one of the questions I think a lot of people asked, and we did a pop me and elicited podcast on this like months ago was like, I don't love a lot of the, like we almost use these rhetorical questions to get out of our identity where it's like, so for example, like, you know, what?
• 6:06
  Like you said, the ultimate goal right now is that a woman can be do the same things as a man. And so then a lot of times we hear those hypotheticals in a work situation. So it's like, you know, one of the things right now you hear a lot from the girl boss movement and all these entrepreneurial women sometimes online is they'll be like, you know,
• 6:21
  When someone says, like, how do you balance it all? You know, like, how do you be a good mom? How do you be a good, you know, wife? How do you also be a good CEO? Then sometimes they just really buck against that question and they just say, like, well, why don't you ask the dad that? How come you never ask the dad how he can balance it all? And it's kind of a deflection. Like, I hear that actually a lot.
• 6:38
  and then they just conversations over. They're kind of like, oh, because we're not asking the dad that, then you shouldn't ask me that. That's unfair, so move on. When my thing is like, well, you should be asking the dad that. Like, how about we actually ask both? Like, how do you actually, like, I think it's the opposite. It's not a deflection to not ask. It's like, oh, you're right. We should 100% asking fathers, how do you be a good father while also being a CEO and a leader and asking mothers? Because we're trying to erase the distinction of identity and role. When it's like, no, I want to keep those distinctions,
• 7:06
  on both genders and say, how do you actually do it? And for both of you, cause it is unfair to only ask one, but we should be asking both. So that's just like a random little tangent of like, I think where this is playing out in a million different ways in our culture right now. Um, and we have to just see first page of scripture is that the image bearingness of God is male and female.
• 7:24
  And there is exceptions even in regards to gender and parody and all these different things in regards. I would say Mark Yarhouse is a great resource. John Tyson's a great resource, but 99.9% is male and female in the sense of I'm speaking of more like intersex and stuff like that. But that doesn't, those don't negate.
• 7:43
  Um, exceptions never negate the blueprint. And so we have to understand that God has a vision and a blueprint and that speaks to us. And Jesus clearly does the same thing. Whenever he got taught, got people brought up to him, marriage or sexual questions or any of those questions, he always returned to the garden and the vision of the blueprint. And something about that is clear from the mouth of Jesus that's going to inform us towards wisdom.
• 8:05
  And so I feel like, yeah, that's what we have to make sure to be doing. And it's clearly not the goal is to just be like boys or to just get the same opportunities as boys. The goal is actually to be formed in the image of Jesus as an image bearer of God in your actual gender distinction. And when you understand that, man, that's where I think he wants us. And that's where flourishing is.
• 8:25
  Hey guys, can I just ask you a quick favor? If you could just pause real quick. Well, actually after I'm done with this, so it makes sense. And about for about 30 seconds and just rate and review this podcast. We can 10 X the number of dads we help through this content. If our podcast can be found by more dads. And one of the weird main things about this podcast game is that how they get ranked and how they get in front of other people essentially is because of how it gets rated and reviewed. So if you can just give a quick, honest rating and review, we would greatly, greatly appreciate it. Thanks guys.