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What Happens To Families When A Wife Earns More Than Her Husband (Patrick Bet-David Reaction) · The Family Teams Podcast

• 0:00
  And to think about the transformation from the 1970s, 85% of families, you would just walk down your street, 85% of those families, the husband was the only breadwinner in the family, right? 85%. Today, it's 55%. So it's important to understand that that is such a monumental change. It completely restructures all of society. And of course, that's continuing.
• 0:26
  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. Hey, everybody. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm with April. We got back from our little Orange Theory workout today. This is our- Little. There's no little about it.
• 0:55
  Yeah, it's intense. Oh, you recommend that couples work out together? Oh, yeah, I think so. I mean, there are different differences. Yeah. You know, in like weight abilities, weight heavinesses. Yeah, yeah. So maybe if the guys ended up weightlifting, maybe that's less...
• 1:18
  A thing to do together. Yeah. I have friends that he, the husband is a triathlete and she works out with him and she's like postpartum. So I know that's not, they're not like doing the same thing, but they do it at the same time next to each other.
• 1:36
  Yes. Yeah. There are different ways to do this. So our compromise is, so April does this orange theory thing, one hour kind of mixed workout. How many times a week do you do? What's your average? I think I do like four or five times. Yeah. And I do it once. Once a week, we do it together.
• 1:58
  Yes, it works out good. I like to do a few other things. I like to go to Planet Fitness and introvert, do a little resistance stuff. So Orange Theory is not exactly my thing, but it is a really good workout and I like doing it with my wife. So it works out good. But man, yeah. So that's our recommendation, I guess. Find a sweet middle point. Yeah.
• 2:23
  That works for us. All right. Well, I got a video. April, I want to play for you. Get your reaction to. And yeah, it's a pretty spicy topic. Do alpha women destroy marriages?
• 2:40
  Okay. Yeah. So this was Patrick David. He did a video on this because I guess they had this giant conference, thousands and thousands of people, right? And somewhere a woman stands up and basically starts to berate her husband in the middle of the conference in front of thousands of people.
• 3:01
  I'm doing all this stuff. I'm doing all these things. And he's like, well, is your husband here? And she's like, yeah, he's sitting right here. So he stops the whole thing and says, okay, sir, would you like to speak? I'll give you five seconds if you don't understand. Five, four, three, two, one. The guy doesn't say anything.
• 3:17
  Anyway, apparently after that, a discussion just erupts like, is this a good idea for women to do this kind of thing? Or is there something almost just broken and backwards about that whole setup that we just a conversation we will not have as a culture? And so then he made this video in response to kind of the discussions they were having. So I'll play this for you. We'll kind of go back and forth on these clips. And I'm really curious what your thoughts are on this because I'm just thinking this one through myself. Here we go.
• 3:43
  We get it as well. Next day, they don't come to the mic. Everybody was waiting for it. Everybody knew. Nothing happens. We continue.
• 3:50
  So then the conversation starts where we're going to dinner. You know, does it work? Does it not work? I don't know. This is not about this. It's not about what's wrong with that. What's wrong with the woman's alpha and all this other stuff? Look, I've got a bunch of different data for you. 70% of divorces are initiated by the wife. I got some data and I got some points on if it's a good idea or not. And at the end of the day, if you agree with me, give it a thumbs up and subscribe to the channel. If you don't agree with me, comment below and let us know how you feel.
• 4:14
  So let me show you some data here from 1972 till 2022, husbands being the main breadwinner, wives being the main breadwinner and egalitarian, which means the husband and the wife make 40 to 60 percent of the household income together. And if those statistics have gone up, have gone down, what it looks like. So here's what it looks like.
• 4:31
  The black are husband's primary or sole breadwinner, okay? Pink is egalitarian. They both make money. Yellow is wife as the primary or sole breadwinner of the household. In 1972, 85% of husbands were the primary breadwinner. In 1972, egalitarian was only 11% husband and wives, and wives were only 5%. Remember, this was only 52 years ago.
• 4:56
  Fast forward to today, husbands dropped 30% from 85% to 55%. They lost 30%. That's a lot right there, right? Egalitarian went from 11% to 29%. That means a third of marriages, both the husband and the wife makes the same amount of money, but the wives went from 5% to 18%, nearly 4X, making more money than the husbands do as the main breadwinner.
• 5:23
  Somebody may say, what's wrong with that? We want equality. We want this. We want that. Now, according to Forbes advisor, these are the reasons why people get married and also different reasons why people get divorced. Marriage. Number one, financial security. 42. I'll pause this for a second. So just his stats, it's important to understand. And a lot of times we describe this. I think it's really important to frame it this way.
• 5:45
  We are undergoing multiple societal experiments and we don't know how they're going to turn out. And so we need to just sort of acknowledge that there's new things that we're trying. And what our culture tends to do is say, if we want this to be true, we're going to ignore the data and just keep pushing down this road no matter what. And because we really do value the family, oftentimes it's important for us to ask the question, what is the impact this is having on the family? Yeah.
• 6:15
  The way that I would say the culture really frames this is because the individual is more important than the family, the impact is having the family is irrelevant. If individuals want this, then that's the only data point that we need to know. As long as we know that and people are choosing this and it's providing more individual freedom, more individual self-expression,
• 6:37
  all of the unintended consequences become irrelevant. That's, I've just seen that over and over again. And so he's stirring up a conversation we're not allowed to have. We're not allowed to look at the data because we've already pre-decided this is a good idea. We've pre-decided that we want to have an equal society. And if there's anything that's promoting more equality between the sexes, it's good.
• 7:00
  So in other words, if we were to discover, just hypothetically speaking, that the more we drive for income equality and men and women in equal representation in the workforce, the worse it was for the family. We would never know that. We would never have that discussion as a culture. We would just bury that fact and we would continue on. And so part of what we want to do is because we're...
• 7:24
  We care a lot about the family. And a big part of what we're describing here is maybe the family should come first. Maybe when you get married, start having children. And maybe what is best for the family should be in the interest of everyone. And maybe that's even more important that we all individually volunteer to give up our individualism for the sake of the family. That's what we're advocating for. And so...
• 7:44
  We actually have to have this discussion, but it's important if you're like, I've never heard this. This sounds really off. There's so many, like no one's saying this. No one's talking about this. Why would you guys bring this up? It's because we have a very, very strange value set here, right? We value the family.
• 8:00
  more than the individual. And because of that, you're gonna hear us talk about things that are taboo because we actually care about if you make these decisions and it's clear that it's better for a certain definition of equality, but it comes at a huge expense to the family.
• 8:15
  we're going to, we're going to still want to talk about it. Whereas the culture will absolutely bury that, that fact. You'll never hear about it. So that's, that's kind of the framing and he's stirring up this conversation. I was sort of surprised, but yeah, do you have any thoughts about that April before we continue? Well, I think just that I don't, I kind of want to say like, what did you expect? This is the natural, you know, sometimes these things take decades to play out.
• 8:43
  And here we are five decades after this, you know, test was done and the results are in. And it is really, you know, you can really see it.
• 8:56
  Yeah, these ideas have consequences. And to think about the transformation from the 1970s, 85% of families, you would just walk down your street, 85% of those families, the husband was the only breadwinner in the family, right? 85%.
• 9:14
  today it's 55%. So it's important to understand that that is such a monumental change. It completely restructures all of society. And of course, that's continuing. And you might say, well, again, you might have a knee-jerk response to say it's all good. But again, how do you know it's good? Let's actually look at the data. So I'll let him continue to spell out his case here.
• 9:45
  82%. Then it's companionship. Then love, formal act of making a commitment to start a family convenience, medical insurance, legal reasons, societal or family pressures. Now, these are the reasons and factors why there's a divorce. Lack of family support, infidelity, lack of compatibility, lack of intimacy, too much conflict or arguing, financial stress, lack of commitment, parenting differences, marrying too young, opposing values or morals, substance abuse, domestic violence, and last but not least, pursuing different lifestyles.
• 10:11
  So ladies, you may want to do woosah or earmuffs if you don't want to watch it or skip the video because you're going to get pissed off. I'm going to read you a letter. Okay. This is an article from Glamour. It's an open letter. And the title of this article says, an open letter from an alpha woman unable to love. Okay.
• 10:26
  So you read this article. This is written by a lady named Suzanne Venker who wrote a book called The Alpha Female's Guide to Men and Marriage is what she talks about. So the writer of this article, Elizabeth Logan, wrote this seven years ago. I'll read you the second paragraph. She says, Venker's thesis is that marriages don't work when one partner, namely the woman, is demanding, unyielding, and unable to be pleased by anything the other partner does. And short,
• 10:50
  Don't be an asshole to your spouse. Might seem like a basic tenant of marriage, but Venker explains this is actually a big problem with our current generation that needs to be addressed right now. Why? Because women having been groomed to be leaders rather than to be wives, those leadership qualities like being bossy, demanding, which will definitely help you to get ahead in the office, are apparently antithetical to the three things that Venker says makes a good marriage. Respect, compromise, and sex. But of course, you might be thinking,
• 11:18
  Wait, it's totally possible for a woman to be both a leader and a wife, but please trust Ms. Venker when she says it's absolutely not. This attitude of leadership may get women ahead at work, says Venker, but when it comes to love, it will land them in a ditch. Don't ask what the hell attitude of leadership is supposed to mean.
• 11:34
  Just go with her on this one. Work skills are the opposite of love skills, okay? The more you work, the less you love. Got it? Why did I think it was a good idea to bring a cover letter and resume on a date? Why do I pester every boyfriend with weekly timesheets and ask to be reimbursed for all expenses incurred on the job? All right, because I'm a workaholic monster. Now watch this. She continues, okay? Venker says, every relationship requires a masculine and a feminine energy to thrive. If women want to find peace with men, they must find their feminine energy.
• 12:02
  That is where the real power lies. Being feminine isn't about being beautiful or svelte or even about wearing high heels, although those things are nice. Being feminine is a state of mind. It's an attitude. She continues, in essence, being feminine means being nice, writes Venker. Niceness by women is the key to the healthy relationships that women are solely in charge of maintaining.
• 12:22
  In case you're not fully convinced of the wisdom of the radical be nice doctrine, Vanker has sources. She quotes quite seriously a man named Chuck who once commented on her website, a strong woman is awesome, but she must be inviting and be able to mesh into an actual relationship. Needing to dominate and overpower, that is a no-go.
• 12:40
  Van Grosso quotes Jackie Kennedy. There are two kinds of women, those who want power in the world and those who want power in bed. So look, if you want to read the rest of the open letter, you can find it and go through it. But when you talk about egalitarian, husband and wife make about the same amount of money, 40 to 60% of the income, or wife's the breadwinner. If the wife's a breadwinner, you guys choose to have kids. Here's an article from Fortune. Most married women still...
• 12:59
  All right, we'll let him continue this in a second, but I'm curious of that. So that letter from and that article from Glamour trying to say, look, when you are cultivating the kinds of temperaments that are really effective in the workplace or in the university when you're trying to get ahead, that help you maximally compete with men.
• 13:23
  At the same time, you're cultivating the kind of temperament that is going to make it very difficult for you to bring the feminine energy into your marriage. That's kind of the case. It seems like she's making there. What are your thoughts on that?
• 13:36
  Yeah, I really agree with that. I think that, you know, I have it's a conversation I've had with a lot of women in the family team space who who will say things to me like, what if I'm the better leader than my husband? Like, I'm actually more talented at this. I'm actually more gifted leader. I'm more this and more that. And and he's just not like, isn't it OK for me to just lead our family? Yeah.
• 14:04
  And so I had to really wrestle with, I believe something about that, but being okay with being kind of vocal about that has been a journey for me. But I think that where, I just have to start with scripture because culture gets really loud and really confusing. And I take way too many things into consideration. So I just have to kind of say, push this all aside and let's go to the word.
• 14:33
  And so as you study God's word, you understand that there is an order and a structure to family. And if you are sold out to him and you believe his ways are best, you believe his ways are higher than your ways, than our ways, then then we have to come to a place of surrender. And I think that's really where it has to start, because, like I said,
• 14:56
  Our world has, you know, we've been groomed. We've been trained as young women in our culture. And I was maybe kind of at the beginning-ish of this, you know, or it was getting louder and louder, maybe is a better way to say it.
• 15:09
  Um, and we've, you know, been educated at least with a bachelor's minimum and then made perhaps master's and maybe even going on to a PhD. And when in that academia, you are being, you know, um, acknowledged, you're getting accolades, you're, um, you know, being successful, you're getting all these, these positive reinforcement and, um, um,
• 15:38
  from people who are just impressed with you. And so to be in a situation where there needs to be real give and take and an acknowledgement that someone is above me and I'm going to submit my leadership, my skills, my talents, my giftings,
• 15:54
  my just capabilities to this man and his vision, it's a very humbling place to be. And so you have to have a reason to do something like that. Like, why would you do that? And so it makes sense to me that the world lives that way. But I think we're talking to believers, Christians, people who think that Jesus is the Lord of their life. I really, really highly encourage you to,
• 16:21
  Study the scriptures. Don't take things out of context. Understand the scripture as a story and figure out what the roles, which we've come to even hate that word, like gender roles, but the structure that God has set up for family and family.
• 16:40
  And getting released within that structure with your leadership abilities, trust me, if you have one kid, let alone two and maybe even three or more, you are a leader. You are setting the tone in your home. You are, you know, hopefully this is all within agreement with your husband and you're getting on the same page about.
• 17:03
  what kind of behaviors you're going to allow and what, like how your teenage daughter should dress. And, you know, you have to be on the same page about these things, but you're a powerful voice. And it is just with a few people. It's not with the masses. But the impact is, you know, crazy strong long term.
• 17:24
  Have you ever considered starting a family business so you can spend more time working as a family team? We've started a year long coaching program called Family Inc. where you get weekly coaching with Jeremy, access to our video training for launching family businesses, and lots of ideas for businesses to start that are working for other family teams. Head over to familyteams.com and click Family Inc. to learn more or to set up a strategy call with Jeremy to see if this might be a good fit for you.
• 17:55
  Yeah. Yeah. And like, this reminds me too, of when I think the church is, is able to say oftentimes things like it's not, it's not as, as, as good for children to have two dads or two moms versus a mother, a mother and a father. Like we're hopefully able to make that case. There's certainly been studies and it's demonstrated, that's been demonstrated, but if it's better for children and for families to have a man and a woman,
• 18:23
  then doesn't it also follow from that, that it's not just the fact that they happen to have, you know, the sexual chromosomes of a man and a woman, but there's actually something more behind that. There's the masculine and the feminine. And so if you have a woman who is actively and has maybe for years before she...
• 18:42
  gets into a marriage, cultivated masculinity or masculine elements of our personality. And like you said, those are the things being promoted. Or if a man is doing this, if a man is really cultivating a lot of feminine characteristics in a way that is directly detracting from his ability to function in a masculine way within the home.
• 19:06
  that what you're doing is diminishing what the family could be, diminishing the parts of the family, diminishing what is best for raising children or for creating that kind of team. And it's very difficult. Again, it's easy to say at some level that a man and a woman is the best design for a family and is the best design for children.
• 19:24
  But I think it's always more controversial to go to the next step and actually start to define or describe what you're actually talking about. Because every step you take down this road, you take the first step down the road and say it needs to be a man and a woman. Well, you've now just taken away freedom from gay couples from being able to raise children. Or you're saying that they're at a disadvantage. And so their individual freedom is more limited than a heterosexual couple.
• 19:48
  Most of us are not afraid to say that. And it's obvious just from any reputable study that has been done. It's obvious that that's to the advantage of those children. But to take the next step, of course, to define what that energy looks like, to define what those roles look like, then you're also in danger of taking away individual freedom from that man or that woman.
• 20:11
  saying that there's certain elements of their temperament that are important for them to bring in and to cultivate and strengthen in order to make that family strong. And one of the things that this article is suggesting, they use the word niceness, right, which is interesting. But, you know, I really like the word agreeability. Women...
• 20:27
  are, according to psychology, they're one standard deviation more agreeable than men, which means that, you know, about 20%, or if you look at, if you had 10 women, six of those women will be more agreeable than the average man.
• 20:43
  but four will be, one will probably be about the same as a man. And then, you know, two or three will be more disagreeable than the average man. Right. So that's, that's sort of like their innate temperament. If you just don't cultivate anything. So you get into the home and you're going to have a certain percentage of women are going to have a native disagreeability, right. That is going to
• 21:07
  something that's going to have to be considered. How is that going to function if we're going to stay married for 50 years and raise kids and do all of the things that we need to do as a family? So yeah, how do you think about this? He, again, used the word niceness. How should a woman think about the
• 21:24
  The topic of agreeability is so much of what we're training every individual to do in this culture is to be maximally disagreeable in order to get their individual needs met. And there's certainly a kind of agree agreeability where a woman just gets crushed by her husband, by all these expectations. She's just a people pleaser. And so this is this is a delicate issue. I'm not saying it's easy, but it does seem to be a part of the big part of the equation of what makes a strong family.
• 21:49
  It is. It is a delicate topic, but it is very important. It's very underlying. And so sometimes you don't even realize that that's a thing that you're maybe kind of struggling with or coming up against. But I know I've also had many friends kind of give me feedback on their journey with this. And I've had my own journey. I would say I was more just very neutral early on, just very like
• 22:15
  We'll do this. I'll do this. And you do it. It's your turn. Now it's my turn. And, and, uh, even just like, um, home decor, it was like, I was a minimalist, like nothing on the walls, you know, just who cares. It's, um, is that what really matters, you know? And so coming to the place of like learning to care about my home and learning to want to, um, to, to press into
• 22:45
  it's almost like the Lord had to give me four daughters to kind of force me to press into that. So I'm saying that because it's not, it doesn't come super naturally to me to be very, you know, feminine. I grew up at a couple of different schools that had dress codes. So I did grow up like wearing dresses and skirts a lot to, in order to keep within my school's dress code. So there was that component. But as soon as that dress, I was done with that dress code,
• 23:15
  And re-choosing to even dress more femininely again was kind of a journey for me to figure that out. But it impacts the home a lot. And I would say our sons need to see what a feminine woman, what a woman is supposed to be or look like or portray. There are, you know, and then our daughters need to also understand that. But, you know, I've had everything from a friend saying to me like,
• 23:44
  man, I really need to, I want to try to be more feminine. I'm such like, I'm a real sport, like I was into sports growing up. I, you know, so she, her standard dress is like a t-shirt, shorts and her hair in a bun. And she was acknowledging that like, I want to become more feminine and I don't even know how, cause I'm such a like dude.
• 24:04
  I'm sporty. I'm good at everything I do physically. I am much more comfortable in a t-shirt and shorts. And I don't even know what to do with my hair. Like, what do I, you know, and then another friend who's like, I don't even know how to put makeup on. Like we never, I just was always into, you know, I was a swimmer. And so.
• 24:22
  Like we just never put makeup on because, and, and so then she's like 30 and she's like, I don't really know how to put makeup on. And so it's just this journey of, and it's like unfortunate that we're not being like, these things aren't being passed down anymore. Even just like, like skills like sewing or things that are maybe like stereotypically a woman thing, cooking in the kitchen. Now I, I don't enjoy cooking. I don't like that task.
• 24:48
  I don't enjoy the process. I don't enjoy finding new recipes. I don't enjoy experimenting. I enjoy eating good food, but making it is just not for me. So I really had to press into that because guess what? Your kids need to eat. Your husband needs to eat. And so, you know,
• 25:05
  figuring out what it is to be like the hearth in the home. Like when you're, when you're in a home and there's a warm fire in the fireplace, when there is food on the table, when there is options for snacks, when there is, um, you know, everyone's has clothes like in their dresser instead of like everywhere. And like there, there is like an amount of order and peace. Um, the, the, the,
• 25:34
  The bills get paid. The, you know, the neighbors get waived too. Like there is this, you know, cards get sent for Christmas. And I don't know that it's part of our job to make our house a home that hums, that considers other people, that, you know, stays in touch with family members that are long distance, that.
• 26:00
  um, you know, notices that someone's growing out of their shoes and deals with that, um, realizing that we need another set of, you know, another coat for this, this winter for that one, but this one can still wear the coat from last year. So there is someone's doing and, um, who's doing all of that? That is just cover such a broad spectrum of needs. If you are going to have children, pay attention to them. Um,
• 26:26
  in a way that it creates a nurturing, comforting environment that kids need that creates like a very stable thing. And I would call those things that I'm saying feminine. Now, I need the masculine to provide them to be able to do all that, to buy the new shoes and get the new coat.
• 26:47
  And to maybe even be the one that builds the fire in the fireplace. But there is a there's a hum and a structure that can come from within that I feel is really up to the feminine to provide. And I mean, it's something I could talk about for a really long time. But those are my thoughts on the feminine. I think there you definitely need both in the leadership roles and the family and. Yeah.
• 27:08
  the feminine has been squashed and almost even mocked. And it's like, as a Christian, if you even think about feminine, you're like, oh, you're going to make me go to the kitchen and wear like a jean jumper. And, you know, I can't cut my hair and I can't have a cute hairstyle and can't wear jewelry. It kind of conjures up this, like all these rules and regulations because...
• 27:32
  even like really strict religious homes are kind of like that. And so we have to find this balance of being down to earth and being real people and not living religiously, but also pressing into the feminine. Yeah. Yeah. This is such a challenging thing to figure out. How do we do this? And I know that I remember Margaret Thatcher, you know, she was the prime minister of England
• 27:57
  She said something like, you know, when I'm when I'm in parliament or I'm negotiating with some world leader, you know, I've got one set of like one kind of temperament. And when I'm home, I want to be a lady, you know, I think she grew up in a culture that knew what that meant. And what's really difficult now is that I think that's getting erased in such a way that.
• 28:19
  I think it's so his point that that in the workplace, you might be cultivating some of these more masculine, really competitive characteristics.
• 28:29
  that I think it's easier for women to potentially do that in the workplace and then still be a lady at home if there was a culturally understood way of what that really meant, what all that feminine energy looked like. But in a culture where that's also being erased, now you're at work and you're discovering that the more disagreeable you are, the more you get ahead. That's true in a lot of occupations, maybe not in something like nursing or
• 28:56
  some of the caring professions, but man, in a lot of the competitive professions, certainly where I worked in a lot of places I've worked, the more disagreeable you were, the more quickly often you were promoted. You were able to make really tough decisions. You're willing to be the bad guy. You're willing to take on, you know, really difficult management roles, things like that. So yeah, this, this collision is very real. All right, we'll let him finish. And then I'm curious what else he's going to say here. And then we'll discuss this part.
• 29:25
  still carrying a heavier burden at home. So paid work, husbands more than wife. Leisure, husbands more than wife. Caregiving, look at wives, more than husbands. Housework, more than husbands. So what happens if you're like, hey, I went to school. I'm going to beat my husband. I'm going to make more money than him. I'm going to do this. I'm going to do that. All right. And you're like, well, my kids are still expecting me to be a mother and a mother has a burden. They don't want to be an average mother. They want to be a good mother. They want to deliver. Great.
• 29:53
  and you still are expected to be a wife, it's a lot of work. And you still are expected to be a sister. It's a lot of work. Sisters like to be good sisters, right? You still are expected to be a good daughter. Girls want to be good for their mom and dad as well. It's a different kind of a burden a girl has than a son has, right? And then you have your own things you want to do, taking care of your health, taking care of yourself. So imagine you're like,
• 30:13
  I bought into this concept of beating men. I'm same as you. Equality, feminism, yes, I can kick your ass, and I'm making more money than my brother, than my husband, than my cousin. There was a...
• 30:25
  I'm freaking burned out. I don't want this, but I don't respect the man I marry because now officially I'm the husband. She's a wife. I don't want to be married to a wife. I want to be married to a husband. You indirectly have taken that away from him. Now, somebody said, well, this is on the men. Yes, I don't disagree. This is why I recommend men reading the book, No More Mr. Nice Guy. It's a tough book, by the way, when you read it, you're going to be challenged a lot, right? But somebody looks at it and say,
• 30:48
  Yeah, I don't know, man. I kind of want my husband to be the husband. And normally that transition of going like this, it's so big because he's been like that to you, gradually going like this. And now you want me to change overnight? Ooh, tough to do, right? And that's exactly what happened at this event. Another lady got up and says, I'm on my second marriage. First marriage was 10 years. Second marriage was 10 years as well. It's probably not gonna be working out. It's like, why? Maybe if that's what you're solving for too, just money, totally get it. But if it's more than that,
• 31:16
  It's tough to do. Watch this article here. A couple of things on marriage.com. Why this doesn't work out. Wives playing the mother. The wife starts treating her husband like a child. So if the boss babe is making all this money, look at your husband as your son. And you look at your husband and say, you don't respect your son. You didn't marry a man to be your son. You married a man to be a man. You don't look at him like that anyway. It's your son. Hey, clean up. Why don't you do this? Why don't you do that? I want you. You talk to your husband like that. You don't.
• 31:39
  Don't respect your husband if you talk like that, right? Compare him to other men. You know what other men do? You know, da-da-da-da-da, emotional manipulation, you know, the aggression, all these other things that's going on, you know, other interests, you know, fighting, comparison, neglecting, and then, you know, you don't do as much as I do. Do you understand what I do for this man? Do you not understand? Finally, the man is like, dude, listen, man, I can't do this anymore.
• 31:59
  That's what's going on today. And unfortunately, many women bought into this feminist movement. And there is no, I want to get a refund. Many lost 10 years. Some lost 20 years. Some lost 30 years. Some are in their 60s. Not married, no kids, but they're a boss babe. Was that the right choice? If it's what you wanted, all in. But if you're watching this and you're kind of like, man, I do not want that part.
• 32:21
  Well, you may want to consider changing your strategy before it backfires on you. In most cases like this, the husband is so burned out and the wife is so done to the elective. I don't even know if we can go through this or not. But if you believe in God, you go to church, you have a community you're a part of, and it's a true decision that you guys want to make collectively together, and you want to find a way to make it work with your kids, with a lot of effort and focus on it, it could work. But it will be very hard, and it will be a lot of work.
• 32:43
  But for some of you that are maybe single, not married yet, you can always, they say wisdom is when you can borrow from other people's experiences to learn from them. This is an opportunity to be wise, not just smart. Again, ladies, before you come and slash my tires, how dare you make a video like this and make my husband and I argue. Fellas, I'm also talking to you. Why did you let this happen to you? Huh? Who told you this was the right thing to do?
• 33:09
  Did the mob screaming off the top of their lungs convince you and close you? That you need to be this feminine husband? Is that what they did to you? Well, listen, you're also part of the problem. I'm not sitting here going after a woman. It's 50-50. Both of you bought into this nonsensical type of idea. And now you're realizing it's not an idea I wanted to buy into. Okay? Oof.
• 33:28
  All right. So a couple of things he said that I think were really important. So one is, and I think this is, this is the thing I kept thinking the whole time he was talking and then he kind of made reference to it there towards the end was, I think that probably the biggest problem that this is created when a woman makes more money than her husband is that she is going to lose attraction for him.
• 33:53
  He becomes something different. He becomes a dependent. And there's something fundamentally wrong with that. And it doesn't, it's not very sustainable. I've seen there's been seasons and then it changes back and, you know, they're able to recover. But if that's your long-term strategy, the next 10, 20, 30, 40 years as a woman, you're going to be providing for your husband.
• 34:13
  I think something gets damaged in the relationship. There's something that happens within the marriage. There's something that happens within the family, the way the kids are treated. And so there's something that happens. And a lot of this does come to the fact that
• 34:26
  you know, and a lot of us have been made of this, that women are hypergamous, which means that they are attracted to men by status. And so one of the weird things that happens to women that are in one of these kinds of marriages is that she is going to work and she's probably working with higher status men, you know, in terms of the workplace that she's looking up to and that she's able to, and then she goes home to her stay at home husband.
• 34:50
  And she's going to lose attraction for him because what sparks attraction for women is the feeling like, oh, you're high. And it's interesting if you think about if women are attracted to higher status men, the attraction goes horizontal and up, but it doesn't go down. And so you have to protect that in your marriage. And I think that his point that you start treating your husband like a son is,
• 35:15
  And you do have power over him. Like you're the one who's paying the bills. Like you're the one who's doing most of the work. And then he listed all those things that women generally do anyway, even if they are taking part in a really high power job, they're going to still do so much work in the home, so much work within the relationships, because they're going to bring all of their feminine ability into the marriage anyway. And so they're going to realize like I'm doing –
• 35:44
  ridiculous percentage of the work here. And so something fundamentally starts to break down in the relationship. So yeah, I'm curious, April, what do you think about that trajectory? Is there a challenge in the marriage itself that starts to emerge when husbands and wives, especially permanently, embrace this kind of division in the family?
• 36:08
  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. Yeah, I think things start to get a little confusing. And I would be curious to know statistics on how many children a couple like that have.
• 36:33
  bring into the family because it just, it would get really hard at some point to, it's, it's, it seems like the, the individualness of that probably competitive thing going on would make it very hard to create like a team atmosphere. Yeah. Like we're in this together because it would sound like the woman's out to prove something.
• 37:03
  Um, that's what it sounds like to me. And so that she would just keep pushing forward, trying to prove something. She's going to be really busy doing that. Focus on that. Um, I do question the husband in that situation. Uh, like, why are you okay with this? And, um,
• 37:24
  The losing attraction thing, I could just really see how that would be a really unfortunate thing that would happen. You know, the language maybe being this isn't turning out the way I thought it would. I'm I'm falling out of love with you. I don't really respect the way you, you know, I'm fine. I'd be fine on my own because I apparently am pretty good at providing financially. So I'm not sure I need you. So you can kind of just see where.
• 37:50
  what the fruit would be of this, where it would go. I think it could work for a time for a season, you know, until somebody gets baby fever or, and then it's like, whoa, what do I have? What's this baby fever thing? I'm busy with my job. And so anyway, I don't know. There's so many different scenarios in there, so I can't speak to all of them, of course. But I just, it seems like those are some of the things that would come up.
• 38:18
  Yeah. Yeah. There's inevitable challenges that, again, we don't want to talk about these things because we want to first decide how we would prefer to engineer society. And then we are only going to pay attention to studies or any facts that reinforce that bias as opposed to reality. And in reality,
• 38:40
  The longer you do this, the longer you cultivate this situation with an alpha wife and a beta husband, the more unhealthy this marriage and family grows. And there's something inevitable about that. And so I think that you have to really take a big step back and think about, okay, how do we in the home?
• 39:03
  And I do feel like in the workplace, I've seen it work where a man who's got a very caring and nurturing personality and has a job like in counseling or something like that can work out those strengths of his temperament in the workplace. But when he comes home, he needs to be the husband and the father. And likewise, if a woman chooses to go into a very competitive industry where she's in sales or something and she's competing with other men,
• 39:31
  And it's a real cutthroat situation. It's going to be challenging because when she comes home, she needs to be the wife and mother for the sake of the family. And so I think that the message that whatever you do, bring into your home exactly the kind of personality that you want to, so you go straight from.
• 39:53
  The challenges and the kinds of things that are stirred up in your temperament at work, and you bring that right into the home and into the marriage. And it's just like, I don't know why this doesn't work. Well, I'm sorry, this institution, this team, the design of this thing is not infinitely malleable. I know somebody told you that, that you could do whatever you want with this and you can be as hyper individualistic as you want. And it's not going to have any impact on your marriage or your children, but that's not true.
• 40:18
  And so unfortunately, at the same time, we've been saying that we've been hiding all of the data and the reality that would help people see that because we don't want to admit anything that doesn't reinforce our already predetermined bias that we need to design this this way.
• 40:48
  where the woman was the primary
• 40:51
  the primary breadwinner for the family. And then what happened in the early 70s? Well, this is when Title IX reform was passed by Congress, which was a movement to try to increase the amount of women going to college. And they felt that it was a terrible thing that in the colleges at the time, in the early 70s, that men were, I think it was 13% more men were in colleges than women.
• 41:20
  So to really close that gap, so much was poured into the colleges to try to encourage greater female enrollment. Like one of the things that started happening was they even did things like, you know, having the same amount of money for female sports as for male sports or whatever. Every area had to be equalized. There was no appreciation for number one, is there a masculine and feminine distinction here that needs to be honored?
• 41:47
  And number two, what is this, what will this do to the, to future families? And so I think one of the most unmarriable people on the planet is a 30 year old single woman with a master's degree because she's hypergamous and she's looking for the, the, you know, the, the guys that are at her level and higher, right. The 32 year old guy with a PhD, right.
• 42:10
  is she's competing with 25 year olds, right? Like it's, it's, this is not being told to women that this is actually potentially really going to make it difficult for you to find somebody to date. The other thing that, you know, shocked me, I think we talked about before that they're beginning to discover is that a woman on hormonal birth control will find a more effeminate man more attractive until the minute she goes off of birth control. Then all of a sudden, all of her hormones switch back to, to normal.
• 42:37
  And she no longer wants to be with this beta effeminate man. So we're monkeying with all of these things. And so Title IX, it was trying to collapse this 13%. And several years ago, the statistics were that 16%, women were now made up more than 16% of colleges, more than men. So all of Congress and...
• 43:02
  We passed all these reforms and had this massive movement in the country to try to close a 13% gap, which really was damaging to the family, I would say. Not in every individual case, but overall, you can look at the statistics. Families were way more healthy before we did this. I don't know how much this contributed to it, but now we have the opposite.
• 43:24
  So what's happening now is that women are gaining status academically at a pace that outpaces men, going into more debt than men to get that status, those college degrees, and then graduating, hoping to eventually become a mother and start families. And again, we're not having an honest conversation about what just occurred. Like, did that make it less likely? And is this part of the reason why we have...
• 43:50
  you know, what some are now calling an epidemic of childlessness, which is women who turn 30 and want to have a child, but are not in a marriage, have a less than 50% chance of ever, ever becoming a mother. Nobody's telling women that. And so women are, you know, getting these degrees
• 44:06
  wanting to spend at least three to five years, maybe more working in their degree area. After all, they spent probably four to eight years getting the degrees and going into debt for it. So why not at least spend that much time working in the field? But by the time you complete that whole cycle, you're in a really tough spot biologically and temperamentally, right? And so again, this is a really hard conversation. There's no real easy way. A lot of this is by way
• 44:36
  This is extremely important information to know when you're raising children, especially daughters. It's like, what is your intuition? What are the things you're reinforcing when you're raising daughters? Do you want your daughter to someday become a mother? Do you think your daughter one day will want to become a mother? Yeah.
• 44:53
  There's a huge, like, I think it's, I think it's like over 80% of all women will someday want to be a mother. So I think it's a safe thing to, especially if you're lifting that up. I think a lot of the women who don't want to be a mother had a really bad experience with family, father, motherhood, family, or some level. But it's really important that if you're raising daughters in a very healthy family, the chance that they're going to want to someday be a mother is extremely high.
• 45:14
  So why would you do things that are culturally being engineered to make that more difficult and less likely or to do damage to their future family? And what does that look like at an individual level? I think we have to really look at it and try to understand. I want my daughters to...
• 45:30
  pursue things that they really care about. I want them to be able to fully enjoy all of the gifts and the callings that God's placed on their life. What I don't really have any interest in is for my daughters to compete in some kind of culturally created, um, uh, game where, um,
• 45:49
  Accumulating degrees and winning in a competitive capitalistic workplace are the primary way they're going to get their identity. No, that's not a good idea for women to go into that world. Again, I don't see that as the same thing.
• 46:04
  as pursuing all the things that God has for them. I think that, I think we've sort of smashed those two concepts together. It says the way that you pursue callings as a man or a woman is through, is through assuming that everything that happens in a hyper capitalistic economy and, and trying to win that game is the way you get that identity and that meaning. And I think there's so many other ways to get identity and meaning that
• 46:26
  including ways to pursue education and work that don't include that pathway, trying to compete in that way. So, yeah, April, any other thoughts on that collision with work? Well, I just I agree with what this man is saying. I just want to acknowledge that because, like you said, it's just not said enough. It's not out there. And I think that, you know, I've heard it said people who don't have kids, they don't know what they're missing.
• 46:56
  And I'm so glad that they don't.
• 47:00
  Because if they did, they would be so sad. And so I feel something like that. I feel like, you know, to the six-year-old woman who devoted her life to her career, my heart goes out to her. Because I know that if she hasn't already, and if she's honest with herself at any point in life, it's going to be hard and painful. And so I...
• 47:27
  I think it's a real, we're establishing a whole section of people in our culture that fit into that category. Yeah. Yeah. So guys, yeah, we want to help and take a big step back. We love family. We love family teams. We love working together. I think daughters in particular can find so much meaning in a multi-generational family context. I think a lot of work that women can do to earn money,
• 47:54
  In the context of a multi-generational family, there's so many opportunities there. The caring, there are things that we just aren't exploring or aren't talking about. For some of you guys who are building maybe your Gen 1 of a multi-generational family, hold on, be careful. Please do not raise your daughters to pursue sort of the typical Western hyper-individualistic, hyper-independent kind of lifestyle. I don't assume that that default is...
• 48:22
  going to serve your daughter's goals, dreams, identities, and happiness well. It won't. In so many cases, this isn't working well for so many women. So I wanted to raise that flag and have that discussion. So April, thanks for wading into this one with me. Yeah, you bet.
• 48:41
  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.