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Modern Fatherhood... Is Actually Motherhood? · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:01
  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.
• 0:20
  Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the Family Teams podcast. I am joined by my partners in crime from both from Greenville, South Carolina, Riley Pilgrim and Tyler Graham, who don't know each other and didn't know each other lived in Greenville until five seconds ago. So welcome to the podcast, guys. Thank you, Jeremy. Thanks for bringing us together. For sure. Yes. And then my fellow Northern Kentuckian, Blake Allsmith, who's zooming in from, I guess, your house over in, what's it called, Ludlow?
• 0:51
  Yeah, we're like Villa Hills, but yeah. Northern Kentucky. Via Hills, if you're from California. Via Hills. Via Hills. Our friend from Los Angeles, she came here. She's like, oh, I'll meet you in Via Hills. I was like, I like the sound of that. Yeah, that's nice. Here we call it Villa Hills. Yeah, it's always got to have a little bit of a drawl. Yeah, Blake originally is from the other side of the river. He's definitely a native Cincinnatian, but we have successfully converted him to the wrong side of the river.
• 1:20
  All you have to give up is your dignity. There's definitely a reputation on the other side, which is unfortunate that people in Cincinnati have of those of us who live on. I didn't know about this. I grew up in Seattle. I just went to the cheaper place to live and turned out it was Northern Kentucky. Yeah.
• 1:36
  I didn't know it came with all the low status baggage, but anyway, we all have our crosses to bear. So, all right, we have a, so what we do here is we look at a couple of clips. I just, I want to process with you guys things that are happening and ideas around fatherhood.
• 1:54
  By the way, we are going to do this for motherhood soon. I've got some ideas. So those conversations on the podcast are coming. But I think it's really important for us to try to get our head around both the challenge of fatherhood and what the implications are towards family, which I think this is great for mothers to listen to as well.
• 2:24
  is constantly getting impacted by the way that we're talking about fatherhood culturally and popularly. So I'm going to play for you guys a clip. So my buddy Chad Masters, who's part of our integrated community, and he's got a great podcast with his wife, Tori, as well. He shot me a reel. Thanks.
• 2:44
  If you're listening to this and you're like, man, Jeremy needs to talk about this, then you can always DM me on Instagram, you know, your ideas and they might appear on the podcast. This is one of those. So Chad sent this to me. He's like, you're probably going to want to think about this one. I'm like, yeah, that one does trigger something in me. Let's talk about it. So I will play this for you guys. You're watching on YouTube. You will see it. Otherwise, you will be able to share it. Hopefully. Recent findings in modern dadhood.
• 3:11
  This new era of dad has been born. They're no longer just a provider to their families. They are involved in the nurturing roles that were once only associated with mothers. The modern dad isn't just a disciplinarian. He walks through the processes with his children, validates their feelings, encourages them to show emotion, to communicate, and he never shames them. He realizes the importance of quality time. He may work long hours, but he knows when he clocks out of that job, he's fully committed to the other job.
• 3:39
  being a dad he realizes the short time he has before they don't need him in the same way this okay so i'll play the rest of this but you guys can kind of see where this is this is building up so he's saying here's all this this baggage that we all had so yeah there's a lot of so he's basically describing um the uh the transition that's happening and i think he's accurately describing the transition about our vision of fatherhood
• 4:03
  is changing culturally. And this video is highlighting some of those elements. So he hit a few of those. No longer shaming, no longer just the provider, no longer the disciplinarian. And then if you're not watching this, you're basically watching a reel of a guy who's doing lots of what I will say are traditionally motherly things. So he will continue. This new era of dad contributes to the domestic labor. Was that Blake?
• 4:30
  Doing motherly things in a contrived setup where the obviously set up with the camera. Yes. So that he can do it in front of the camera. Yes. Exactly. Yes. Yeah. We're seeing he's like doing the dishes and hanging out with his kid and, you know, basically taking him by the hand and just being very, very present. And it's just him and his child in a home, you know, basically like his child looks like probably a little too young for school.
• 4:53
  or the house, no matter the dynamic between partners. There is no competition. There is no set jobs. There is no gender roles. There is only one goal, and that is to create a household that is a positive environment for reading good humans. If I could sum up parenthood with one phrase, it would be, I'm tired, but I'm also the happiest I've ever been. Recent finding. So what did he say? What do you guys remember he said? So there's no gender roles. I don't know if you remember what he said there.
• 5:20
  It was something like no roles, no gender roles, no assigned jobs. No assigned jobs. Yes. No order. No boundaries. Yes. Jeremy, did you pin that one comment to be showing on the screen there on purpose? Oh, no. I didn't actually see it. What does it say there?
• 5:40
  Basically, it says, had me in the first half and then lost me in the second half. Okay. Talking about the feminization of fatherhood there. Yes. Well, that's exactly what I want to talk about, which is that I think that people...
• 5:55
  The church, people, people within society would be cheering the first half. And then all of a sudden shocked about the move he makes in the second half. So the first half you're seeing a very present dad who's just like in the home. And, you know, and then when he says there's no roles, there's no jobs, everything's equal, but it's not showing everything equal. It's just showing a dad alone. So.
• 6:17
  I think this is the move that people, that I'm getting so frustrated people are cheering on, right? This is the reason why, you know, in the whole Bluey conversation, I've gotten in so much trouble because I think people, they don't, they spend the first couple of seasons just like amazed at this present father. And, oh, I love the fact that he's doing all these traditional mother things. And that's so great. And then in the next season when they show the actual role reversal happening and gender being erased and.
• 6:45
  Then they're like, oh, I didn't see that coming. And I'm like, wait, wait, wait, guys, you didn't see that coming? Don't you realize that's the whole point of this transition? That if you untether fatherhood from its basic objective design that we are given in Scripture, and I've written a lot about the difference between Bluey and Abraham, that's,
• 7:10
  to try to help people understand, yeah, there are objective ways of seeing this. And so what we need is not just a, we need a positive, clear vision of fatherhood that shows what that role actually looks like. Because if you don't do that, the goal is to move from the playful present father as being the primary way to describe fatherhood,
• 7:32
  to that final statement. It's designed to get you to, there are no gender roles. There is no succinct as fatherhood and motherhood. There's only parenthood. That's what the culture desperately wants to say. That's the kind of conversation I want to have. But I thought this reel actually perfectly encapsulated that move that people are so shocked that it's made, just like the commenter, but it's inevitable. And it's actually the design of the move in general. And I think we're being very susceptible to it. So yeah, Riley, what are your thoughts about this?
• 8:03
  Yeah, I think that's absolutely right as far as what the movie is kind of the philosophy of the story that's being told with the motherly dad, Jenkins. You're hitting the nail on the head. One of the things I noticed when the video was playing was the usage of the word just.
• 8:25
  He said, just provider, just disciplinarian. And I think that comes from the fact that a lot of 90s kids particularly are scarred by fathers that were just providers and just disciplinarians and just the thing, right? Instead of living into a fuller picture and vision of what fatherhood is supposed to look like. And so people are reacting to that.
• 8:49
  flawed picture that they receive as children, uh, instead of looking for a fuller picture. And I think that's what you see playing on a video. Yeah. Yeah. That's interesting. Yeah. I do think that it's important to acknowledge that, um,
• 9:06
  that kind of generation impact that's occurred, where you have a generation that had a distant father. And so generations tend to be reactions to the previous generation. And this reaction gets way more extreme when we're not tethered to some kind of objective description of what we're actually aiming at. So if you don't know what fatherhood's supposed to look like, if you don't know why God designed fatherhood, if you don't have divine revelation around the nature of fatherhood,
• 9:35
  then all you have is a reaction. That's why the primary move of feminism is to ask women to become like men, because there isn't an objective of what it means to be a female. There's only the move towards equality, which is we see men having things we want to make sure that
• 9:56
  We're not denied those things as well. And so the move is in the direction of the reaction instead of towards the ideal. We desperately need an ideal. And we are living in a culture without an ideal, which leaves us to just go to one extreme after the other. And the extremes are going to get more extreme. And so people, you're only allowed to celebrate right now fatherhood that looks like motherhood.
• 10:21
  Um, you're not allowed to celebrate fatherhood that looks like fatherhood. And so you, you will see, I will guarantee you guys can look around at any depiction of fatherhood. And this is why I've been raising the alarm, um,
• 10:32
  And you look at that and you're like, well, there's a lot of good in that. I mean, it's great that a father spends more time with their kids. It's great that a father is doing more work in the home. I don't have anything wrong with any of those things. Every time I make any of these, anytime we address this issue, the immediate reaction is the assumption that we think that the idea of fatherhood, dads being active in a home environment.
• 10:57
  is somehow negative or being very present and playful with a child is somehow negative. That's not the critique. The critique is that that is defining fatherhood. That's the problem. That is a huge problem. I have a huge problem with playfulness and presence defining fatherhood. Fatherhood involves those things. Those are elements of fatherhood that are good and you can dial them up and down during different seasons, but that's not what defines fatherhood. What does this turn up for you?
• 11:25
  Yeah, a couple of thoughts, maybe as contributors to this, that are such a strange problem, because I think that maybe this guy, I don't know if this guy knows that he's being a shill of the feminist slash communist movement of disintegrating the home, right? Like, we actually...
• 11:41
  We don't know what he's doing, but I think it's very natural for us to, I think it's natural in the early stages of fatherhood to actually embrace this as the ideal. And I'll say that I've actually fallen prey to this because at the early stages, there's actually a need for more nurture than there is for, let's say, masculine energy when you have a bunch of kids under the age of four.
• 12:04
  You know, like there still is need for masculine energy. I'd say specifically boundary setting, discipline and things like that, maybe as you're getting closer to four. But when you're at like 12 months and below, there's actually very little training. And in fact, you're almost interchangeable with the exception of the fact that you can't like nurse the child. But like you really just who's going to hold the baby. Right. And so I think that what happens is this is actually an instance of the Dunning-Kruger effect where.
• 12:29
  people get really excited about being a father and they're like, being a father is amazing. All I do is love and nurture them. And it's like, yeah, because you've only, you've got a nine month old, but what you don't know that's happening is this person is going to individuate and then suddenly start pushing against your values and causing chaos and actually farming your wife. And someone needs to stand in the gap and actually create order in this. Right. But they don't know that yet because I think it's the, there's like, I think the most content is created by the youngest fathers.
• 12:59
  And because I think the older fathers, one, are maybe less familiar with social media. And two, probably have more important things to do than to create social media posts a lot of times. Right. Yeah. I want to say.
• 13:13
  Maybe to specifically Riley's comment on the harm of fathers who are maybe just a provider or just X, Y, or Z. I think that that's a little bit exacerbated by therapy culture, which is, I think, actually giving us in our 20s, and I'll say giving me in my 20s, essentially I'm feeling confused or whatever else of my general life, and I can point to my dad and not empathize with him because I wasn't.
• 13:40
  I wasn't a father of teenagers yet. And I cannot empathize with him and say, oh, he was just being a provider and whatever else. And now a decade and a half later, I'm like, oh my gosh, I'm so thankful for that masculine act of being a provider. And so I think there's some element of this thing where I think we're actually propagating a story of harm when actually maybe just purely masculine energy was, was enough. And we just don't yet have the perspective that that was enough. Right.
• 14:07
  Yeah. We have to understand that the thing that's really weird is that you can be raised in a generation where a father had to do just tremendously difficult things to provide for a family. But if the next generation is easier, then you can resent your father for why weren't you more present?
• 14:26
  I wasn't there. I didn't see the 60-hour work weeks. I didn't see you bearing with a really tyrannical boss and just deciding not to quit because you were thinking about me and about providing for me and so that I had food and I had a roof over my head. Those are things that once you get to a certain level of affluence, you just discount.
• 14:44
  And then you're saying, what would be really great is just to be this dad who's just, how is that guy making money? Like every time you watch Bluey and the dad is not working like that, you have to ask, like, who is actually providing for this family? And of course, you don't know. Is it the government? Is it his wife? But somebody is actually fathering this family and it's not the dad.
• 15:03
  And so this is part of what's so confusing about the way our culture talks about this. And if you can provide for your family, and then at that point you choose not to be present, you know, there could be injuries, but a lot of times gaps exist within families or out of necessity because we are in a survival mode season. Like we talked a lot, a lot about our kids about, man, you have to be aware of
• 15:27
  of sometimes you have a need and the families desperately would like to meet the need, but we may not have the ability to meet the need. And this has happened, you know, imagine generations that sent all the fathers off to war. You know, where's my, you know, where's my dad for three or four years while he's literally risking his life to provide for our freedom. And so only for me to go- He was just absent. Yeah, yeah, just the absent father. Yeah, so the reason matters.
• 15:54
  Need a blueprint to revise your family to be a multi-generational team on mission? The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or FamilyTeams.com.
• 16:14
  Now, again, there are certainly examples of fathers that are neglecting their families for absolutely selfish reasons. But I think that we have to get into the details. And you can be just as injured by an absent father who's gone off to war as you are by a father who leaves the family because you...
• 16:32
  You know, when you're three, how do you know the difference? You're still being potentially injured by the lack of presence of a male figure in your life. But I think that, you know, part of what it means to become an adult is to look back on those experiences and actually try to understand what happened and why and have some grace for your family and the situation you were in. Especially like I think that it's critical to think about the kind of father your father had.
• 16:58
  Um, and I, I do have a lot less patience for men who have great fathers who really set them up well and then really drop the ball with regards to their children. Um, I, that really bothers me, man. There are a lot of situations where an abusive father, um, uh, was, um, uh, you know, a man coming from a family with an abusive father becomes a much, much better father. Um, and that, that, that there's a generational, um, uh,
• 17:23
  improvement that's occurring. That now, instead of complaining about the problems that your dad brought into your life, what you need to be thinking about is how are you going to be even a better father for your children? And again, the word better means that somehow we can agree on what the ideal father looks like. No one's ever going to be the ideal father. But because we don't know that, this Instagram reel literally defined it for us. It told us this is the ideal
• 17:53
  And so who cares if you work? Of course, money and provision is going to come from somewhere, anywhere. But you need to be present for that three-year-old. And Blake, I love what you said about the, I think, a big part of what I was writing in the articles about Abraham.
• 18:09
  When you think about a father, you have to think about the head of an actual family, which could include adult children, a much larger number of children, a much larger number of people in the household. Abraham, even though he only had two sons, he had 318 trained men in his household. It was a very complex organization he was running.
• 18:28
  And so part of what you're thinking about is what this looks like when you have, like, I have adult children and grandchildren. So it's like you have this situation where you're having to manage a lot more than a three-year-old. And I agree, the Dunning-Kruger effect, which basically says the person with the least amount of information is going to be the most bold about what they believe because they don't actually know anything. So they don't know the counter arguments to what they're describing. And I completely agree that's what's happening in this video. Tyler, go ahead. What are your thoughts about this?
• 18:59
  Yeah, I think you made such a great point there. And maybe I'll illustrate it by talking for just a second about my family. So I resonated a lot with what you're talking about, Blake, where as a teenager, even as a young dad, which I'm still a young dad, but I've got six kids and I feel like I've got a bit more of a voice now. But I look back at the ways that my dad...
• 19:24
  showed up for me and he was, you know, worked in the automotive industry, gone for long hours, kind of hard nosed and things. And I'm like, man, I don't want to be like that with my kids. And, and like you said, Jeremy, when there's not that plumb line of like the ideal, right? We swing the pendulum too far the other way.
• 19:45
  And, and so I caught myself doing that and realizing I was very frustrated with my dad and he and I have, have kind of talked this out, especially as I considered, like you were saying, the history of my family, right? My great grandfather died when my grandfather was two. So my grandfather grew up without a dad.
• 20:04
  They're in rural Ohio, living on a farm and living that type of lifestyle. And so my dad's growing up in that environment. You know, I'm sure his dad's doing the best that he can, figuring out life, having not grown up with a dad of his own. And then, you know, my dad makes the move away from the family, really setting off to give me and my brother's opportunities that he never had, right? Moved our family across the country for that.
• 20:30
  And it wasn't until I was an adult that I realized that, man, he like he made these sacrifices and went out into uncharted territory to set me up for success that he didn't have the opportunity for growing up in small town, middle of nowhere, Ohio.
• 20:47
  And it really wasn't until I was adult that I realized the, what he had done. And it's his, those realizations have helped me come back to, to the center a little bit, see like the ideal of who were called to be his dads and the ways that my dad did that.
• 21:05
  And so it's interesting to wrestle through that because, you know, I post a lot on LinkedIn about present fatherhood and what that looks like. And my dad will read them and he'll say to me sometimes like, hey, it makes me makes me feel like I was a pretty crappy dad. And, you know, it's fun to be able to talk to him and say, hey, like.
• 21:21
  Our life growing up didn't look like the life that I have for my kids now. Like the life that I have for my kids now is only possible because of what you did. You weren't perfect. I'm not perfect. My kids aren't going to be perfect. But like you have set something up for me that I wouldn't have had the opportunity to do otherwise. It's taken me way too long to realize that and to express that gratitude to him.
• 21:44
  But it's amazing when we can go back and see that play out. You know, John Tyson, I think, does a good job in his primal path work for discipleship pathways for fathers and sons. He has an exercise like a gratitude letter where you just tell your dad everything you're grateful for that he did. And I went through that exercise a few years ago and radically shifted.
• 22:07
  kind of my relationship with my dad. That's so good. That's awesome. Yeah. What, what did your dad do right? And really thinking through, yeah, those, those, those really positive things that our father has given us. So yeah, that whole idea that your ceiling is, is designed to be your children's floor gives you a way to, to really figure out how to do this properly. And I think, I think that, you know, one of the things I, um, I,
• 22:36
  When you mentioned that about all your LinkedIn posts, by the way, if you want an amazing amount of incredible father content, please follow Tyler Graham on LinkedIn. It's awesome what he's posting on there. So I think that one of the things that, as I have friends who are leaders in churches, one of the things that they will say is that we don't want to talk about family or fatherhood in any kind of ideal way from the stage.
• 23:03
  It just, it makes people feel, you know, crappy. It makes current parents, it makes single moms feel terrible. And so, and so there are so many churches, especially really large event evangelistically focused churches that have essentially banned the discussion of ideal family or fatherhood from, from their teaching.
• 23:23
  And this is a sort of a phenomenon that's occurring in the church where there is an obsession with being a hospital for the broken, but there's nowhere to train people. And so you just end up with more and more and more people that are sick and dying. And so you think about like in any given country, the amount of time and attention they spend on hospitals versus education, that needs to be balanced properly. And you want to spend more on education.
• 23:48
  And of course you want to take care of people that are sick. But a lot of what we're experiencing is sort of like saying we can't teach kids to read when there are people in the hospital that don't have sight. Like, you know, every time you teach that kid to read, you're making the blind kid feel terrible, you know? And this is what we're doing to an entire generation in the church is we're saying,
• 24:11
  Do not talk about this because feeling like you might be judgmental and anytime you mention any kind of ideal fatherhood or family, it feels and sounds judgmental to people. And so part of why I like to do these conversations is try to be as blunt and clear as possible.
• 24:29
  on the family teams podcast is because I know that most of us aren't hearing this anywhere. We're not really hearing an articulation of what fatherhood and family ought to look like. So that's, but this is, this is a really big topic where I let you speak and I'm curious what your thoughts are. And then I got one other topic I want to hit with you guys.
• 24:51
  Awesome. Yeah, so, I mean, y'all brought up so many good points. I feel like we could talk about just this one reel for hours. But one of the things I wanted to hit on is, I feel like to what you're just talking about, the church right now is in a bit of like an identity crisis.
• 25:08
  trying to figure out what is the nature of the church. And, you know, one of the things that I think plays into this whole idea is the church in modern America, at least here in our Western bubble, is a shame of...
• 25:31
  the history of Christianity and phrase to look back. And that plays into any institution is a reflection of the people that make up the institution, right? That's same with government, church, blah, blah, blah. And, um,
• 25:49
  you know, like, we are achieving, typically, the sin of our fathers, those two is giving grace, and it can pull out and extract the beauty of what came from our forefathers, right? And that goes for our actual fathers and for the fathers of Christianity beforehand. This comes from a podcast I was listening to recently by a
• 26:17
  a group called New Christendom Press. They have a podcast called Kings Hall and they're going through the what do they call it? My brain's flipping me right now. The Crusades.
• 26:31
  you know, the dark crusades, the thing no one wants to talk about in Christianity. And they're kind of peeling back the layers of the onion and saying like, yes, here are some, here's some of the things that are regrettable about the crusade. Here's also the entire context in which that took place and trying to pull out the heroism and some of those things without necessarily saying that it was all great and good and,
• 26:58
  cheerable but what can we take from that and learn from it and i think um in immediate context you know he's that guy in that video is failing to do that with probably his father as as most people in today's cultural context are failing to do with their fathers and rejecting that entire picture for motherhood
• 27:16
  Yeah. Yeah, that's excellent. Yeah, that we we have to put these conversations within context and the context is our specific multigenerational family. And because we have a culture that is hyper individualized, we don't ask what that larger context is. We ask, OK, for me as an individual, what did I need? Oh, my mother wasn't what I needed.
• 27:41
  My father wasn't what I needed. You don't believe me? My therapist will tell you. There's no context there. Like there's no, there's no, like what, what was, what was the actual, what were they dealing with? What was their upbringing? And so we are multi-generational creatures that are, that exist within family systems.
• 27:56
  And if you take an individual out of that family system, then you're not going to understand that individual very well. And so we have to get into what was happening in each of the people in the family to get a proper picture. So, yeah, these connections are critical. Well, I want to change gears and talk to you guys about a topic that confuses me.
• 28:14
  So I'm like really excited to get your feedback. So there was a this video is from this guy. I don't know who he is. It's a little clip from Entrepreneurs in Cars. The title is called Why Women Don't Support Husbands in Difficult Times. And I was like, what? So I watched this video and he said something here that I was like, really struck me.
• 28:35
  And I want to get your guys' take on, I actually have never thought about this before. And so there's a couple of ways I'm going to approach this topic. But it starts off while he's reading an account of a woman who's basically saying, my boyfriend lost a job a couple of months ago and he's depressed and I'm working and I come home every night.
• 28:55
  to be with him. And, and I find my, and he wants me to comfort him. He wants me to feel bad for him. And I just don't care. And I'm now, I'm losing my attraction for him. How do I get this attraction back? Okay. And this guy's response was amazing. So I wanted to get your take on this because I think this is really important. Okay.
• 29:17
  Well, we're going to have a conversation about female solipsism today. In today's show, we're going to conversate about female solipsism. All right, well, look, let's get... I don't like that framing. Solipsism means selfishness. I think this is much deeper than that, but here we go.
• 29:44
  So I realize this might sound a little bit repetitive to some of the folks that have been watching me for some time now, but there's a quote that I've said many times that has been used by others out there.
• 29:56
  It is, women do not care about your struggles. They hang out at the finish line and they pick the winner. That is an innate baseline nature of female survival techniques. Okay. So his quote there is, women don't care about your struggles. They hang out at the finish line and pick the winners. Okay.
• 30:21
  Look, if we go back thousands and thousands of years, if women in a tribe of the old hunter-gatherer sort of days was not being looked after by her man, the father of her kids, the person that she had pair bonded to and mated with, you know, let's say. Maybe she's got kids with them, maybe she doesn't. I don't know about this lady's scenario. It doesn't sound like there are kids. But if a woman made a poor mate choice, it would often spell certain death for women back in those days.
• 30:50
  Now, not much has changed since then. Sure, a few thousand years have passed. Women can now have jobs. We all drive in cars. We have computers. We all pay taxes. Women need a man like a fish needs a bicycle, as the feminists like to say. A lot of strong, independent women out there today that aren't in the need of the care or the love or the protection of a man these days. So,
• 31:12
  That being said, you have to understand, like, from a baseline perspective, women just need men to get it. They need men to be competent. They need men to be able to solve problems. The biggest problem men need to solve is their own financial and providing and provisioning problems. And this guy, as she stated in her post early on, is unemployed again.
• 31:38
  Now, when you get to my stage of life and you end up talking to enough of the gals out there that have either been divorced, going through a divorce, or maybe their second or third one, if you know what I'm saying. One of the things you'll often hear them say is, well, I had to untie the knot because he was a loser. One of the big complaints you'll hear women make often is he couldn't keep a job down. Women don't have any patience for men that are unable to provide for the family.
• 32:06
  Now, the flip side of the coin is...
• 32:11
  So basically what he's saying there is there's an innate element within, within women that is attracted to competence. I think that's the kinder way to say it. And so, um, and, and when, when a, when a, when a, um, couple starts to, when a woman starts to fall in love with a man, oftentimes what she's sensing is, I think, I think, I think he's going places. I think I can hitch, you know, there's something I see in him. There's some potential.
• 32:37
  And especially if you're planning on having a family, you know, and there's all kinds of this weird research going on now that when women are on hormonal birth control, it tamps down some of this level of attractiveness and they become attracted to men that are more feminine. But as soon as she goes off hormonal birth control and she's a normal woman who is going to have children and wants a husband that can provide for a family, then all of that DNA or all of those hormonal...
• 33:06
  elements of attractiveness that are innate to women become kind of come online. And this is where a lot of divorce occurs. This interesting theory that I think is a lot more and more people are talking about. So I think the idea of attraction now, I think that there's one other thing I want to throw into the mix here that is really relevant to this topic. This is a tweet from
• 33:35
  He wrote this, part of what women find attractive in a man is his potential to create a safe, secure, meaningful life for her. Because women are always gambling on men, their attraction to any particular man wanes and waxes based on their perception of his competence to create the life she needs. Bitter men describe this as loving opportunistically or what this guy said, solipsism, selfishness, basically.
• 34:04
  But it's really not, is what Dean Abbott says. It's just part of how female attraction mechanism works. Now, I'm bringing this up, and most people who are tuning into this are, you guys are mostly fathers and in marriages. So why talk about this now? Well, the reason is I'm having conversations with a lot of dads, and I just had one recently, where they're noticing that as they struggle,
• 34:33
  Their wife, they expect support from their wife. They expect to be able to be comforted. But if they're showing a lack of competence and a lack of problem-solving skills, especially systemically, then what I'm hearing increasingly from men is she is...
• 34:51
  She's losing patience with me. She doesn't want to comfort me. In fact, it seems like she's becoming unattracted to me. And I'm like, nobody's ever told me this. I've never heard of any conversation around this in the church. We're just like, no, you make the covenant and it doesn't matter what happens after that because you're going to be together for life.
• 35:09
  Absolutely. But man, it's really important that we understand how each other's attraction mechanisms work because we want to be enjoying our marriages. We want to be helping our spouse in her level of attraction towards us. And so what this has caused me to wonder is,
• 35:27
  And I'm curious, any reactions you guys have to any of this would be interesting. But part of what I began to wonder is if this was better known, then don't men need to support other men? Shouldn't fathers support other fathers? You know, if I don't expect you to go home and get all this, like if you're unemployed again, like I...
• 35:48
  I have, I love helping guys that are struggling. Like, I don't, I don't care. I'm not, I'm not, you know, nothing about that is, is being determined by my, by attractiveness. Right. I'm heterosexual. I could care less. I want you to succeed and I want your family to succeed.
• 36:04
  And so if I think that you're actually making progress, then I've got a lot of energy to coach you and to encourage you. And I wonder if in the church we did this more. So anyway, so there's really two topics there I wanted to tease out with you guys. One, do you believe this is true that there's an attraction mechanism within women that is driven by competence?
• 36:24
  And problem solving. And that because of that, when you're in a marriage and you're struggling with some of those basic elements of provision or whatever, there's a warning bell that needs to go off. My wife might start losing attractiveness towards me. I don't know how to say that properly, but she might not be as attracted to me during that season. Yeah.
• 36:45
  Which is like shocking to me because you feel like you need it then more than ever. Like if there's ever a time I needed my wife to support me, it's when I'm unemployed for two months trying to like figure out something. And, you know, but, but hey, there's another mechanism at play you should probably be aware of. And then, and then how do, how do men, especially in the church, how do we as, as fellow fathers support each other? So Blake, I'll start with you and then, yeah, we'll go, go around the horn, hit Riley and then Tyler. But Blake, yeah, what does it start for you?
• 37:12
  Yeah, I think it resonates absolutely. I think it's probably true in the same way that both men and women find a healthy partner to be attractive, right? There are certain ratios, physical ratios of shoulder to waist for men or hip ratio for women that is fundamentally attractive. And that's scientifically supported. And that is information that's helpful to know. And it actually is.
• 37:39
  for me, that's a motivator. I want to work out. Part of the reason I want to work out is because I want to be attractive to my wife. And I think that's a solid motivator. And similarly, I think my wife wants to work out because she wants to be attractive to me. Now,
• 37:55
  Am I going to leave her if she doesn't have that ratio? Or is she going to leave me because I don't have that ratio? No. We are in a covenant before God, right? And so there's a certain level of safety, which is actually really important, especially when we're feeling down, if we have a failure in our career or something like that, that there is actually a fundamental level of safety, which is that no one's leaving anybody here. And we committed specifically through sickness and health, through richer or poorer, right? And so that means, oh, shoot, we're in this thing together.
• 38:25
  And there's a nice kind of carrot dangling in front of me, which is like, if I can get back on top of the horse, my wife is going to think I'm attractive. And that's a thing that I like. Right. And so I think that that's like, I think that the better way to think of it is in terms of incentive as opposed to on the flip side, which is like shame when it's out. I think the covenant exists for when we're knocked down and the carrot exists for, you know, when when we're trying to set our eyes forward. Yeah.
• 38:51
  And in terms of actually helping each other on the career side, 100 percent. From my standpoint, I need more positive self-talk at home. So I don't actually want to get deep into my issues around my work, into my frustrations around my work at night or in talking to my wife. I actually want to be like, no, this is what I'm thinking. And I got a plan in place and I just got to trust the plan. And I'm going to keep on doing that. And so I think that in general, men, when we talk about our problems, tend to spend like 30 seconds on the problem and like five hours on the solution.
• 39:21
  to help each other get out of a rut or whatever else if we need to get back to competence. Yes, that's really good. Yeah, Riley, what about you? All right, I'm going to try to make it through my thoughts here. I wrote something down. I have a lot of concern in my head, but first I would say that I think the guy in the video
• 39:42
  that like he's saying a lot of truth but i think he's like the stereotypical red pill right you know where it's it's not healthy patriarchy he seems to have some negative views like calling women selfish and all that kind of stuff um but at the same time i definitely think hypergamy is a real thing hypergamy being the idea that women are attracted to equal or higher class um you know
• 40:05
  however you want to look at that, where that doesn't typically play a role for him as much. We're more visually attracted to physical attribute as far as in the beginning, you know, on the surface level of attraction. I think what he's getting at here goes, like you say, goes deeper than what he's saying. I think it gets to the idea of,
• 40:32
  Vision. I know you talk about this a lot. It gets to the idea of biblical patriarchy, the idea of father rule. And how do you rule if you don't have vision? And if a man is not casting vision, like the whole idea of leadership is to chart a course, look at something far from the distance.
• 40:52
  Have a plan of how you think you can get there and then gather the two on board and not just force them to go in, but sell them on the idea, get them excited about what you're doing, and then go face the challenges to get where you're going. Are you following us on Facebook and Instagram yet? Look up at Family Teams to get even more free content and never miss out on event announcements.
• 41:19
  I'm saying when a husband or a father is doing that, and it doesn't matter as much from my experience, even just talking to my wife, it doesn't matter as much of how much you're providing financially or how tight the budget ends. If you are actively working heartily towards a vision that you have gathered your family around,
• 41:44
  And you can have a low period where you are unemployed and things are tight and you're struggling financially. And typically, I have not seen people lose, like wives lose a track in the store of their husband. If their husband is actively pursuing the vision in the midst of a challenge, what happens though is when men enter those, those faith groups, they haven't cast a vision before
• 42:07
  then they don't know where they're going. The family doesn't know where they're going. The wife feels insecure, unstable, confused, and lost. And then they start having those doubts of like, can he provide? Has he given up? Do I no longer have the leader? And then last thing I'll say to the point of men supporting other men,
• 42:30
  is that uh i've gone through the season of like complaining to my wife about stuff i'm dealing with and i actually kind of agree with some of the red pill side of things that's not really healthy um you know there's a there's a level or you need you know making sure that you're being vulnerable with your watch that she knows what's going on with you and is it completely lost
• 42:55
  But I think two aspects. For one, like you were saying, it plays into the idea of her insecurity. When you're insecure, she's insecure. And then number two is a woman's maternal instinct to nurture is no good for a man who's struggling. Men do not need to be nurtured and coddled in the midst of struggle. We need to be understood and then encouraged and pushed out of whatever.
• 43:25
  A large portion of it is probably due to a character flaw that would be able to do it, whether that's lack of focus, undisciplined, whatever that is. And so it takes another man to look through the situation, understand what they're doing and say, hey, you know, I'm here with you through it. I love you, brother. But you need to block all social media on your phone and your computer and get to work and work hours and stop watching videos, you know, whatever it is. Women typically aren't going to be the ones to do that.
• 43:55
  Yeah, those are good points. A couple of things you said, Riley. So first of all, shout out to my mom. So one of the things that my mom, and I've said this to her during her birthday Shabbat when we're kind of thinking about different ways in which my mom or dad have really impacted me.
• 44:15
  I don't remember. I must've been like maybe 11 or 12 years old. And I was complaining to my mom. My mom just like, she stopped me dead in my tracks and said, men don't bellyache. Men deal with it. Like she, she, she had zero nurturing left for me. You know, I could see that she, she had, she had that ability and she certainly did that when I was really young. But, but I said, I can't remember exactly what age, but some age she was just like, you got to become a man now. Sorry, you're done. You know, you're not going to listen to that anymore. Yeah.
• 44:41
  And it like like to have somebody tell you that men don't complain to women. I was like it like it cured me for the rest of my life. Like I just I feel like it just snapped something like I needed somebody. I needed that kind of like cold water in the face moment. So anyway, I like I think that that's really important to understand. And I think what you said, Riley, I think it's also really critical to say that.
• 45:05
  This can't be about comparing to other families or some absolute amount of money that we're trying to chase as men or whatever. Who cares? Most women don't care about that. They do care that there's a vision and that there's a competent leader who's leading us towards the vision. And so that vision could be being very frugal, right? We could be on mission and very poor. But if the sense is the leader's got this, he's confidently leading us towards the vision and he's going to care for us, then I think that most women are like, heck, yeah, I'm on board with that guy.
• 45:32
  But it's really the incompetence, the, hey, we're going to get there. Oh, we didn't. It's constantly really not meeting up to his own expectations or meeting the vision he's casting. That demonstrates, that creates sort of a very insecure place. And by the way, when we do the motherhood roundups, we might bring this back. I would love to hear a woman's perspective on that.
• 45:57
  We're a bunch of guys trying to figure this out. And so if they're willing to talk about it, because I think this is a pretty sensitive conversation. But yeah, I love trying to understand. I want to be really proactive in helping fathers.
• 46:16
  who are in a season where you're really struggling to provide, where you are struggling to lead your family and set a vision. Where do you go to, and I think what you said, Riley, men don't need to be coddled in that situation. They actually, they need help, but coddling and nurturing is
• 46:34
  is not really what's necessary. And I would say that the one time my wife enjoys nurturing me, I don't know if that's even a good word, is when I've tried really hard and she can see that it's succeeding, but I'm exhausted. That's the moment where she's like, I'm here for you. I want to love you. She's maximally attracted and I need her. There is something there that I think is a
• 47:00
  Um, that I think, uh, where that comes out in a positive way that doesn't, it doesn't stop me from, cause I think what, what in the beginning of the video, the guy was dealing with somebody who wanted comfort when he was literally sitting at home depressed all day. It's like, that's not the time to get nurturing from your wife. So yeah, Tyler, what's, uh, what, what, what does this start for you?
• 47:22
  Yeah. So this reminds me of, I think, a dynamic within my marriage that we've, my wife, Bree, and I've had to navigate over our almost 12 years of marriage. And I'll air my own dirty laundry here. And that is that I, by default, can be a very passive person. Like when left to myself, I can be pretty low ambition, low vision.
• 47:46
  kind of that idea of like sloth, not taking the right action. I'll do something, but it may not be the right thing. It's been this constant thing that has come up, especially in the early years of our marriage, where if I were struggling or if I was just feeling like, hey, I'm trying, I'm doing things, but my energy is focused in the wrong place. My wife is very compassionate, very loving to that. But after some period of time,
• 48:15
  If that, that prolonged inaction is like very indicative of incompetence, right. Where she like kind of hit the point and she's like, Hey, you, you just got to do something, you know, to your point, Jeremy, where it's like, I think it differs significantly in the face of like exhaustion as a result of action towards vision versus exhaustion out of a place of inaction in lack of vision. Yeah.
• 48:41
  And so that has been a thing that we've had to navigate, right? Especially now with, with raising six young kid, my wife homeschools, all of them. If I find myself in a place of, of complaining or being frustrated for a prolonged period of time, you know, Bree can hit this point to say, Hey, I have to make a thousand decisions a day for all of the kids. Like I cannot make more decisions for you. Like I need you to step up and take, take this on. Yeah.
• 49:10
  And it's again, not in a harsh way or not in like a confrontational way, but it's just, you know, kind of that, that voice of like you need to step up and do something. And very rarely in those times have I felt like, Oh, she's not supporting me. It's like, I know she just wants me to move, right? Action creates traction. She wants me to just take some steps and she's going to be like the wind beneath my wings when I do. But the longer I sit there in inaction or in passivity,
• 49:39
  You know, we talk about like the lowering attraction that the guy said in the video, like, man, like those are the times where our marriage hits points of like, you know, physical intimacy dwindles because of my passivity. You know, there's a very direct relation to that.
• 49:54
  I think it's very, very true. And like I said, it doesn't have to be as big a thing as being unemployed for an extended period of time or trying to start a new business. I think it can be in the mundane moments of navigating daily life with young kids that you can easily find yourself in that place. If you're like not to Riley's point, feeling envisioned and taking steps towards bringing that vision to reality. Yeah.
• 50:18
  Well, so the last thing I'm curious on this topic is this really stirs up for me when I'm talking to young men, especially young men who are about to get married. It makes me really want to tell them.
• 50:31
  you need to find a pathway for work where you are increasing in competence. Like there's some kind of ripple effect that occurs. I remember thinking about this the other day when I was sitting in a doctor's office and I was like sitting in one of those tiny little cubes and I was like, this dude literally goes from room to room while people are just waiting for him.
• 50:50
  to use skills that he spent eight, 10 years developing to solve problem after problem. And I imagine going home after solving 30 problems, diagnosing all those people, and then coming home every night. And the reason why people become doctors and lawyers or get...
• 51:06
  or craftsman or get into a profession where it's like, I'm going to use whatever my skills are. And then I'm just going to like enter into the workplace. I'm going to spend eight hours feeling super competent, you know, solving problem after problem. People are coming to me and I'm, you know, solving all these problems left and right. And then they come home and you're, you're,
• 51:26
  you're a different kind of man in that house after having felt this high level of competence, then the opposite of that is the guy who goes to work and he's constantly struggling and he's worried he's going to get laid off. He's got a boss who doesn't appreciate. It's like, it's just so hard on a guy. Like a lot of this is just trying to understand the way men work and then the ripple effect that has on the family and on your wife. And so, yeah, this is just the beginning of a thought. I'm trying to understand like if competence is a...
• 51:55
  is a critical part of attractiveness, then it seems like one of the things that we need to be really careful about is to make sure that there isn't a period, and Tyler, you mentioned this, like a lot of it does have to do with how long this goes on. Like you can only exist for so long in a state in which you feel like just incompetent at work and incompetent at home
• 52:18
  And I think that part of what I've been really wrestling with, with a lot of dads is they'll feel really competent at work, but then they'll get home and they'll start to feel incompetent at home. And a lot of this, a lot of this podcast is, and a lot of things I write is trying to help men and fathers.
• 52:34
  feel competent at home. Like I want you guys to learn how to do this well. Um, and so, uh, but I think that there is a, there is a critical part of the way that you think about your own work that probably does play into the confidence of that competence. Um, that these are connected in some way. So yeah, does any, any thoughts on that, that that stirs up like the connection between the work and, uh, and coming home? Yeah. Um,
• 53:00
  I wonder how much, Jeremy, just another thought kind of on that same vein. And we've talked in the past about dads that are over-invested in their work, giving themselves to work more wholeheartedly than they are their family. And I wonder how much of that is a result of feeling more competent at work, right? They feel more at home. They feel more at peace. They know what they're doing. And so they, again, going back to my statement about, you know,
• 53:29
  taking the right action versus the wrong action they the right action may be to invest more wholeheartedly in their family but they they feel incompetent there they avoid that by by overworking because it's a culturally appropriate way to avoid your family as to to overwork you know really yeah um
• 53:51
  This is something that I'm super passionate about internally and trying to figure out because, man, it feels like a beast of a problem. But I feel like men nowadays in general are just lost in terms of how to think about things.
• 54:12
  anything, like a frame of reference in which to put these things. And to your point, I remember being in the military and one of the main reasons I left the military was because I was constantly feeling incompetent, not because I knew I was an incompetent.
• 54:29
  But I was enlisted. I was in a position where I was surrounded by officers most of the day. And you're typically treated as an enlisted member just by nature of rank. You know, you're like, your opinions don't have as much weight. Everything you say or do is doubted in its competency. And I just got fed up with it. And so after 10 years of service, I left.
• 54:54
  That was one of the driving reasons. I was just like, I know that I'm competent. And I'm tired of feeling incompetent because it does bleed into your household. You doubt your own decisions at home. You're more insecure just by nature how you've been for the majority of the day. I think that's huge. I think that...
• 55:17
  Men need more training on how to be competent in the home because we've been trained for the past few decades that the home is the domain of the wife. And I actually disagree. I think the home is the domain of the husband because the husband, the father, is the one who is responsible for the entire household. And you have to learn how to and even have the framework of delegation.
• 55:46
  you know, of how do I assign this responsibility to my wife and then manage that responsibility that I've assigned in a way that's competent. Right. Yeah. So much of that transition, I think, is the difference between a family and a household. So the way that the culture thinks about it is a family is just a place where nurturing happens for young children. And in that environment, women are way more
• 56:10
  competent to do that. They're just innately built for it, um, biologically. But if, if the household is this larger organization that has economic engine in it, that's, that has like, you know, older and younger, uh, people, aging parents, like there's lots of things have happening, a whole spiritual life. And all of this requires leadership and all this requires vision. And all of this is the primary way that both you and your wife are living your life through this thing called the household.
• 56:38
  then yeah, the structure is completely different. And that's really the biblical structure of the household. It's assuming a household. It's not assuming this strange Frankenstein that we've created in the West that we call the modern family. And so much of the confusion just is we don't really have the proper entity in our heads when we're reading scripture and trying to understand where that's coming from. So
• 57:00
  All right, guys. Well, this is great. This conversation is, thanks for letting me process that one out loud. I didn't quite know what to do with it. I was just like, I keep hearing this from guys. I keep hearing the idea that, the surprise that I'm struggling. Why isn't my wife more supportive? And then I think the problem that we might have in the church, and that is that we don't,
• 57:21
  we don't go to bat for other guys who are struggling to get to that level of competence. And I think so much of what we need to do is be helping young fathers and young men in competence, both in the home and at work, and to understand there's something basically masculine about that and that that is somehow supporting the family in such a key way. And I think that, yeah, so help.
• 57:44
  help young fathers in your community be a lot more hot for their wives. All right? Do a brother a solid, younger brother. Okay? Awesome. Thanks, guys, for doing this with me today.
• 57:58
  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.