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Should Fathers or Governments Protect Children? · 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.
• 0:19
  Hey everybody, welcome back to the family teams podcast. I'm here with Cameron Akrami and Kurt storing. Thank you guys for joining me today. Yeah. Thanks for having us. Yeah. Excited to talk about that. So we're going to hit just kind of one topic and I wanted to dive into, uh, something that, um, this guy, Rob Henderson, um, mentioned. So Rob is a kind of a, he's got a fascinating story. He's, he grew up kind of as a foster kid, uh, and he, he, um,
• 0:48
  is just a brilliant, has a brilliant mind and has been writing, uh, uh, really from the perspective of the working class about a lot of issues and probably his claim to fame, uh, more than anything else is really coining and describing the impact of what he calls a luxury beliefs, uh, on, on society. So luxury belief is something that somebody, a belief that gives you status, uh,
• 1:15
  but that you can only really live out or hold if you are in a position of economic privilege. So there's lots of examples he gives you lists, tons of them, things like defund the police, you know, like that works great if you live in a gated community, you know, not so good if you live in a really crime ridden area. So you can say that all day long because you're not incurring any of the costs, but you are getting status.
• 1:40
  by saying that within a certain community. Another one is a lot of positions that are related to climate change. I mean, it's really easy to talk about, you know, hey, we're going to, we should all pay more for energy. That's great if you're not in a, you know, impoverished country, you know? So this is not being called out properly, that there are beliefs that give you a lot of status, but they also, you're not incurring the cost. You're actually exporting the cost on
• 2:09
  What's really interesting to me about Rob Henderson's position is he's really begun to talk about this from the perspective of the family. As a kid who grew up in a single-parent household and ended up in foster care, he's very concerned about popular beliefs that are really hard on the family. He talks a lot about any kind of beliefs.
• 2:32
  we should have alternative lifestyles. We don't really need nuclear, the nuclear, moms and dads aren't important. He's like, yeah, that, that works really good. If you are in a position of the top, you know, 1% of privilege, then maybe you can make that work. You have all, you use all this money and all this privilege and you're in your huge network to be able to defend your, you know, your alternative lifestyle. But for somebody who's barely surviving to say being a single parent is just
• 2:58
  just as good as being in a two parent home. That is a terrible idea for 90% of the world. And they're not getting status from your belief, but your policies that are creating the situation potentially for more people that can't incur the cost. So anyway, that's, that's, he's, he's really stirring up that conversation. And he was on a podcast called Unheard, where he was describing one of these situations with regards to technology that really stood out to me. So I'm going to play this little clip for you guys, and then we'll love to get your feedback.
• 3:29
  There was an op-ed in the New York Times written a little over a year ago, and the headline was something like, I make video games, but I won't let my daughters play them. And he was very honest. I mean, it was a very blunt op-ed where he was like, we want you to be addicted to the games because that's how we make money. It's not that hard to understand, to connect the dots. But then he's talking about how he's worried that his daughters would get addicted to it, and so he doesn't let them play. I cited this study recently
• 3:58
  indicating that children raised in families that earn $35,000 or less per year spend two hours more per day on screens than children raised in families that earn $100,000 or more per year. So essentially, kids in poor families spend two hours more per day in front of a screen than kids from rich families.
• 4:18
  And a lot of that has to do, I think, you know, interestingly, that is connected to the family issue, where if you are a single parent and you work all day and your attention and resources are spread very thin and then you get home and your kid is disruptive or rowdy or something, it's just so much easier to just give them an iPhone or an iPad and just say, hey, go chill out and they can be distracted and kind of, you know, soothe for a while while you can, you know, kind of have some peace and quiet. But if you have two parents,
• 4:45
  you can actually monitor a disruptive kid and find more constructive and engaging ways to take up their time. All right, so that's his position. And I wanted to maybe get your guys' feedback on this. So I think one of the problems that I'm really wrestling with here
• 5:01
  is that when we talk to family teams, we're often talking to, you know, intact families and we're trying to help level up families that where there's a mom and a dad, but what's, you know, the vast majority of people are living in a world with broken families where they don't have a lot of those advantages. And so.
• 5:22
  Part of what I don't know what to do with, and I want to get your guys' take, I just want to have a discussion about this. I really don't know how to think about this. So is regulating technology a family problem or a societal problem? That's the question I'm trying to wrestle with.
• 5:38
  I definitely prefer to think of it as a family problem in my context because I have the bandwidth to enforce on my family the kinds of sort of technology restrictions that my family will help my family to thrive. But it requires enormous amounts of work. I mean, I have contracts with my kids and I monitor the devices and I'm locking them down.
• 6:02
  And so we're in a position of just radical privilege, so to speak, from just a bandwidth perspective. We care a lot about this issue. We've thought a lot about it. We've read the books. We've read the articles and we're intentional about how to limit our children's, the impact that social media is having my daughters, for example, or
• 6:22
  And I would say that even in that context, there's a lot of times in which we've really failed our kids. I mean, there's a whole world of challenges I think our families faced, and we just were too slow or too ignorant or too passive to fight this monster. And so I definitely don't want to paint the picture that we've done everything right. Like we're constantly learning and we've made a lot of mistakes as well.
• 6:46
  Okay, but that's one frame. There's another frame that Rob Henderson is bringing up that I don't think about nearly enough. And this is the one I wanted to ask you guys about. What about everyone else? I mean, you've got companies that are spending billions of dollars to get children addicted to things that are gonna grab their attention and make these different platforms a huge amount of money. And wow, that's not a fair fight. I mean, I don't feel like it's a fair fight in my context.
• 7:16
  And so I don't know what to do about this, but this is kind of the, I want to start this conversation and say, you know, as fathers, do we have two obligations? Do we have an obligation on one hand to be leading our families to make sure that we have policies in place within our households?
• 7:33
  that are protecting our children from this vulnerability. But do we also have the obligation to think about this at a societal level, given the fact the vast majority of children are being exposed to these sort of predatory technologies in a way where the parents or the single parent, in whichever case, they just don't have the bandwidth to really properly monitor what's going on. And so these kids are getting addicted in ways that are destroying all of us, right? And destroying another generation of children.
• 8:00
  Yeah, what does that start for you guys? I'll start with you, Cameron, and then what do you, Kurt? Yeah, as I'm hearing that, I'm imagining people that I know, people who even do have the bandwidth and yet are just kind of tossing screens in front of their kids. And it almost sounds like the same thing as junk food. You know, it's just difficult to find, these are people who have the bandwidth. So I think in their case, it is kind of a choice, but I see similar decisions being made
• 8:32
  in those families that don't have the means and really don't feel like they have much of a choice. And I guess what I'm just kind of wrestling with as I hear this is the idea that there's kind of a story that is being believed and lived, where you don't almost have a compelling enough vision outside of that.
• 8:55
  And so what we see at the end of a lived story are families with means and families without means. But is that because there's like an underlying set of beliefs that have led them into those places where somebody who has means is also stewarding other things in their life in a way that is maybe more responsible? And maybe that's the...
• 9:15
  just another fast of that. So that's kind of what that's stirring up for me a little bit is wondering, are we looking at one? Is it, are we kind of a little too narrow and looking at just the screens or is this kind of a whole bag of decision-making and beliefs that lead somebody into a position where they find themselves with that? Relying on that. Excellent point. That basically, um,
• 9:38
  One of the principles that I, the way I would kind of describe what you're describing Cameron is look, children were meant to be raised in very strong families with, with two parents and any band-aids you put or anything society does to try to mitigate the damage created
• 9:54
  by not deciding to follow the kinds of beliefs and the kinds of practices that lead to that is just sort of delaying the inevitable catastrophe. The catastrophe has already happened. The catastrophe is that that child needed a father and a mother that were very actively engaged. And so we can zero in on this one problem,
• 10:14
  Oh my gosh, they're, they're living at the mercy of technology platforms, but they're living on the mercy of a thousand other horrible things like the fast food industry, you know, like, you know, who knows what's going on in the school systems, you know, bubble. So it's just, yeah, it's a, the, the, the catastrophe happened, um, much earlier in the, the root of the problem is, is a little bit further back. So yeah, Kurt, what does that, what does that start for you? Any additional things you add to that? Or how would you, how do you think about this problem?
• 10:43
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• 11:03
  Yeah, for me, I have to ask, is this so unique that it requires a new solution? Because typically anything where you're asking about a societal constraint, I'm asking who's putting that constraint on me and what are they going to do next? And so just for me, my own belief system is like, yeah, let's not do that.
• 11:24
  And so what do you do for me? Yes, I agree that as others, we have to be the ones guarding this. I think this is a maybe not unique, but a very specific worry that I've got for my kids because it is so overwhelming. Like there's just no getting away. And like like, you know, the clip said, it's it's specifically designed
• 11:46
  to take attention away. And I think there's an epidemic of distraction lately, or perhaps over the last number of decades, that I think stops people from thinking deeper about the purpose of life, the things that matter. And so I think there's a huge existential component to this that if we just try to regulate this from, let's say a federal level or something like that,
• 12:11
  Um, I think like you just said that bandaid analogy is perfect because it's so much bigger. And yet if we do nothing, are we willing to pay the consequences of like, I don't know, 95% of the population not pulling their head out of the matrix in time. So that's where I go. Like, I'm good with me. I'm trying to tell everyone I know. Uh, and I don't let my kids do very much on screens for this specific reason, but can I do anything about the guy down the street who I know plays video games for eight hours a day?
• 12:39
  I don't know, because that just gets into like government oversight that I'm comfortable with. Yeah. Yeah, man. Yeah, it is. It is a problem in which the disease is so terrible, but it's possible the cure would be even worse. And it was interesting, like when we were, April and I were just in Spain and, you know, they were lamenting. We had a tour guide who was, you know, and every single one of our tour guides were divorced and single parents. It was, that was, I don't know why that was the case, but that was the case. That was.
• 13:08
  you know, a very small sample size, but they, but because of this, we were, and we were there part of the reason why April and I like, we like to travel to new country and ask a million questions about family when we're there. So it's been a week in Spain, just, you know, trying to understand family culture. And there was fast, there's a lot of fascinating things, a lot of really cool things that we learned, but I think one of the challenges and one of the things that we, we saw that was universal and was really articulated well by one of our, one of our tour guides when we were asking her about her family and, you know,
• 13:34
  She was talking about COVID and how it was so hard on the kids. And she said it was so bad because the government was unable to protect the children. And, you know, it's like we need, you know, and they're, they've, I think they outlawed homeschool for the same reason. Like we have to make sure the government gets between parents and children because we can't trust parents with children. I mean, who knows what will happen.
• 14:00
  If the government can't protect children from their parents, and we all know there's horror stories, right? This is kind of Rob Henderson's whole story, which is why I find his opinion so fascinating, because he's constantly dealing with this tension. Because he's very much in this boat where he saw what happened when he was exposed to horrible things as a child and neglectful parenting.
• 14:22
  Yet, he's also equally, if not more alarmed and concerned about the other problems that the cure could be worse than the disease. This is such an intractable problem and every society is attempting to deal with this in different ways. But I think that the problem, and the thing I want to signal.
• 14:42
  is that the diseases are getting worse. And I think that people are going to begin to demand as the diseases get worse, it's going to be increasingly attractive for people to call for the government to step in between parents and children and say, we have to regulate all of this and be like China, which literally regulates how much time your kids can spend on a computer. Because we're going to get overrun by the countries who
• 15:05
  do have universal standards around these topics because they, they, we can't defend these children. So, I mean, this is such an intractable problem that I'm like constantly trying to understand. Yeah. Go ahead, Cameron. What are your thoughts?
• 15:18
  When I hear that, it seems like the fundamental problem is the family and the decision making and kind of the whole ethos and worldview that's there. And because that is rotted out and the walls are falling down, it's like there's nobody, I don't want to say nobody, few people talking about...
• 15:35
  the core problem and trying to strengthen that so that upcoming generations can build that foundation in. And instead, they're just shoring up the walls to try to keep the walls collapsing. But that's such a crummy solution. And I think that one issue is that it has to do with how loud some of these voices are.
• 15:56
  there are very loud voices in marketing that are screaming all day long that you need to sign up for this you need to buy more you need to take you know take in this consume this media and then you've got the other side who's the in hysterics over this you know the legitimate problem that's there but i think they're misdiagnosing you know the the solution is you set a band-aid and but i think it has to do with like the the
• 16:20
  the cultural kind of norm and the cultural story that's there, how do you shift and shape that? And I think that's kind of one of the harder problems because how do you get somebody to believe something different? Because that's the issue is you're letting your kid, you're thinking it's okay to put him in front of a screen because you believe that that's better than them running around and being a little bit crazy or whatever the deal is.
• 16:42
  Yeah, this is the reason why you guys, I'm such a hawk watching the way the culture describes something like fatherhood, right? So, you know, so many people that I know have been sort of obsessed with Bluey, you know, as a TV show that kind of describes a certain version of fatherhood, the playful father. And, you know, my critique on that has always been, there's nothing wrong with being a playful father. I think that's a really critical part of fatherhood.
• 17:06
  But I think that one of the things that a show does when it starts to enter a symbolic world is it really starts to articulate the vision or the whole overarching idea. And it's difficult to imagine the kind of really rule setting father, you know, when you're constantly casting the father in this very particular role. And what we need is...
• 17:32
  Imagine a show that really demonstrated that, wow, once you have a father and a family, all of a sudden there's, there's someone who's constantly thinking about the vision. And part of what you're describing Cameron is fathers get to play offense and not just defense. Like we're actually leading our children into a great vision and a great mission. And so part of the reason why we're saying no to things is because there's a giant yes that we're leading our family towards. Well, that requires a lot of leadership that requires a certain kind of philosophy of family that the family is like a team. And so when you start to have those beliefs, you start to...
• 18:02
  imagine that a family led by a father, a visionary father like that is going to have such a different culture and that's going to lead to a very different kind of experience for children and for moms and dads. And no one's really articulating that well at a culturally attractive level. And when we are describing that oftentimes we're subtly taking potshots at this. Another way I'm curious your thoughts about. So,
• 18:32
  Jonathan Haidt has been going around really describing these four rules that he wished that all families or all schools would adopt that would really protect particularly daughters from social media.
• 18:47
  One of those rules is that he wants parents to decide voluntarily to not allow children to have social media until they're 16 years old. And he's called it a collective action problem, which is to say that he wants parents to go to other parents and try to get them to also...
• 19:08
  not allow this for their children. And that if we, because part of the problem is that kids actually don't want to be on social media. They just feel like they have to get all the friends are on social media. So we have to solve the problem as a collective. And what I immediately thought of was Rob Henderson's
• 19:24
  situation, which is that works great for the 10% of impact intact families where you can actually talk to the, to, to a, to an active mother or father who's thinking about these things and willing to stand up to their daughter and, and actually enforce, you know, and monitor what's going on.
• 19:40
  You know, that's, that's not where most families are at. And so the collective action problem is not going to work because there's not enough intact families to have a collective action at all. You really have to say that you really have to put steel in the spine of moms and dads to say it's your responsibility, regardless of what anyone else does, regardless of what other families do. You have to make these decisions and set these policies as a, as a household. That is your job. And we've stolen that somehow.
• 20:06
  And I think we are beginning to subtly suggest, and this is why I'm trying to tease this out, that this isn't even our problem. This is really a government level problem. And man, that's what you're saying, Kurt, that you're going to create a disease that's worse than the cure once you start unleashing that beast on families. The family plan calendar is the new way to keep your family team organized. Plan your rhythms, menu, household chores, and notes for the family all in one place. Visit familyteams.com to purchase.
• 20:43
  Yeah. And I think that this is so big that I personally, I need to break it up. Like you've got the very specific problem of fathers leading families. And even in that, in our circle, so to speak, guys who should get it, I'm still surprised that it's not a hundred percent like, oh yeah, we don't have screens at all. Like, what do you mean? We have iPads at the restaurant? Like, no, of course not. And I'm surprised that guys who have everything else that I think
• 21:09
  you know, a good father has, and they're like still oblivious to this. And so the issue doesn't seem to have seeped even into the most, I don't even know what you want to say it aware fatherhood circles. And that's a huge problem in itself. And so what do we do about that? Well, seems like you're doing that with
• 21:24
  this podcast with family teams in general. I was doing that with DadWork. I was trying to be the example of, hey, guys, our generation missed out on wisdom. And that's what I get from you personally. Like, I see you as going like, hey, there's actually this whole vein of wisdom that we've just missed. And I was like, oh, can you please just keep talking, Jeremy? Because like, I didn't even know that. And so I'm seeing this and we almost have to get more of that more real life
• 21:49
  examples of why and how fatherhood can be amazing if you put in the hard work of creating boundaries. And if you actually go through the actual steps of leading your family, like you would lead your business, for example. But on the other side of that is this societal issue where all of these kids are being missed.
• 22:07
  because they have the single family households, because their parents probably missed that wisdom that I'm talking about. And so when you start going back to the first order problems, it becomes so big that I have to ask the meta question of what is my responsibility here? Can I or should I be trying to get government to do something because, wow, look at all these kids? Or do I just go in my pocket and say,
• 22:31
  The single mothers that I know, do I say, Hey, can I hang out with your son for like an hour? We'll just go play at the park or something with my kids. Is that the best I can do? Or is it so big that I got to do more? I have no idea. I don't, I would love to hear what you guys think about that. Yeah, man. Yeah. Yeah. Because I, part of the way I think about this problem is.
• 22:50
  you have to have a hospital and you have to have sort of an army going at the same time. Like you have to play offense and defense. You have to deal with the problems that, that, that have created. And if you just, just have a hospital imagine, you know, you have a invading force, right?
• 23:05
  And you're like, well, we're really good. Like we're all doing hospitals. And so as people are getting blown up left and right, we're so good at healing them. And so, you know, it's like, you also have to like put people on, you know, in the, you got to build the castles. You got to like, you got to, you got to raise up the armies. You got to play offense and defense. And I think that sometimes, you know,
• 23:22
  Yeah, I don't feel like I can do either. I have to, I have to serve and love that single, um, mother and the real situation she's in and the, the kind of damage that's been created, uh, by who, however that happened. And then also, we also have to like be pushing forward, right? Pushing, pushing forward into what has God really designed family to be? Um, and how do we maximize our, our households, um, and their, uh, their, their flourishing and their impact. Go ahead, Cameron.
• 23:49
  Yeah, it's just kind of two things really to touch also on what Kurt was saying. One, I'm the same guy. My circumstances haven't changed much. They hadn't anyway, except for I adopted a new story and a new vision and everything changed.
• 24:08
  In other words, I'm the same person, and yet everything about my family, everything about the things that I devote my time and energy to, all of that stuff, I can't even think hardly of one area of life that hasn't shifted for me over the last couple of years. And so if I'm the same person and it's just taking a different set of actions over time, then I believe that it's possible for anybody.
• 24:28
  So there is a bit of hope in that. So I don't want to just say, well, it's just a disaster. That said, my family is still intact. I'm not just picking up the pieces of something that I exploded with a hand grenade. So that is a real thing. So I like the idea. One, I think we just need to call these alternative modes and methods for what they are. And that's entirely destructive. And all that we're talking about and the reasons why, like the foster care system is an example of wreckage.
• 24:56
  you know, and you know that we're tied in with the foster care system. All of these things that are even causing this discussion with the clip that you played are because of just wreckage and broken things. And so if we're not willing to call those things and the things that lead to that kind of wreckage,
• 25:12
  out for what it is, then I think we just perpetuate the same kind of problems. So one, I think call it for what it is, but also there is hope if somebody is willing to embrace and take some different steps, even with a little bit that they might have, I think. I've got a lot of hope that it doesn't take a lot. It takes intensity, but I think it doesn't take a lot of means necessarily to make some big moves.
• 25:32
  Yeah, I agree 100%. So I do think we got to think about this as a generational issue. We got to get as many families to begin to think this way properly, that what they're raising up is particularly, and I think often it starts with getting the father, getting the father to understand what their role is and what a family really is, that they get to build a multi-generational household, a multi-generational team on a mission. And for them to get excited about that and then to begin to move their family properly,
• 26:02
  Once your mindset shifts, it changes everything. And that's what I've discovered increasingly is that that is the root of the problem. And so it's not an awareness problem, first and foremost. It's not a policy problem. It's not a technology problem. It's a problem in the way that we see family and fatherhood.
• 26:19
  And that's why I like, I like to get really minuscule. And people are like, I just got another person online today who was like coming after me a year. You know, can't believe I would critique something like blue or whatever. I definitely see that as the, as the core of the problem. Like we have to have a conversation about the nature of fatherhood because once a father gets a vision for what fatherhood really is, something comes online that changes everything.
• 26:39
  And all of a sudden solutions that you couldn't imagine start to occur to them and they start believing their family in a better direction. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for doing this with me today. This has been a awesome kind of quick break from the day and like dive into a super deep topic. Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. Perfect. Thanks, Jeremy.
• 26:56
  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.