I talk with Professor Nancy Pearcey about her book The Toxic War On Masculinity. We delve into the heart of masculinity's trials and tribulations in a secular world. We talk about the struggles men face in education, work, and life expectancy and debunk the often overlooked reality of Christian men breaking adverse stereotypes. We also discuss the power of the father-son relationship and how society can better support fathers.
Can you trace the concept of toxic masculinity back to the Industrial Revolution? We do that and more as we explore how the shift to a public environment devoid of biblical ethics has burdened men with a conflicted set of values. We also discuss how the church can be an invaluable resource to help men navigate these murky waters. Not to be missed is our exploration of the difference between being a good man in the context of a Christian ethic of manhood.
We also bring to the fore the intriguing work of marriage psychologists and sociologists. We uncover how fatherhood changes men's biochemistry and discuss Andrew Huberman's insights on baby weight in men. The Church's role in supporting fathers also takes center stage in our conversation.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
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I talk with Professor Nancy Pearcey about her book The Toxic War On Masculinity. We delve into the heart of masculinity's trials and tribulations in a secular world. We talk about the struggles men face in education, work, and life expectancy and debunk the often overlooked reality of Christian men breaking adverse stereotypes. We also discuss the power of the father-son relationship and how society can better support fathers.
Can you trace the concept of toxic masculinity back to the Industrial Revolution? We do that and more as we explore how the shift to a public environment devoid of biblical ethics has burdened men with a conflicted set of values. We also discuss how the church can be an invaluable resource to help men navigate these murky waters. Not to be missed is our exploration of the difference between being a good man in the context of a Christian ethic of manhood.
We also bring to the fore the intriguing work of marriage psychologists and sociologists. We uncover how fatherhood changes men's biochemistry and discuss Andrew Huberman's insights on baby weight in men. The Church's role in supporting fathers also takes center stage in our conversation.
Talk to Joe Garrisi about managing your wealth.
Sign up for Barbell Logic.
Place your meat order with Salt & Strings.
Start banking with Private Family Banking. You can reach Private Family Banking Partner, Chuck DeLadurantey at chuck@privatefamiliybanking.com, call him directly at 830-339-9472, or download his e-book HERE.
10 Ways to Make Money with Your MAXX-D Trailer.
Buy your chicks at IdealPoultry.com.
This episode is brought to you by Backwards Planning Financial with Joe Garrise. It's also brought to you by Ideal Poultry, by Private Family Banking, and finally, this episode is brought to you by Salt and Strings Butchery. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast. Of course, I am your host, eric Kahn, and delighted in this episode to be talking with Professor Nancy Peercy about her new book, the Toxic War Against Masculinity. Now, I first read Nancy's book Total Truth back in seminary and was incredibly impressed by her writing and her insight. Also, as a heads up, I'm going to be reviewing Nancy's book in a later episode. At the time of recording, I'm not actually read just skim portions of the book. There's been a number of issues on Twitter that a lot of people have pointed out. One of the things I'll do next week Lord willing, for the episode is we've got Pastor Rich Lusk is going to be discussing the book and some of the problems that he had with the book. I think they're going to be helpful insights, so bear that in mind. I think this is a helpful conversation with Nancy. She has a lot of good insights and a lot of helpful things to point out, but we are going to be reviewing and critiquing in a later episode with Pastor Rich Lusk and hopefully that should benefit everyone who's interested in this conversation about the book and also just about masculinity and sexed piety in general. So again, that should be coming out next week. Obviously, when we have guests on we're not going to agree with absolutely everything that they say, but hopefully this does again fuel the conversation. Now.
Speaker 1:Currently Nancy Peerce is a professor and scholar and residence at Houston Christian University where she holds the Elizabeth and John Gibson endowed chair in apologetics. Of course she studied under Francis Schaefer at Libre in Switzerland back in the 1970s and she's worked alongside Chuck Colson. She's a professor and bestselling author and Nancy in this book asked how it became socially acceptable to express such open hostility against men. Books are sold with titles like I hate men and are men necessary? So we're going to talk about that in this episode. Why that came to be.
Speaker 1:Religion is often targeted as a prime cause of toxic behavior in men. Yet surprisingly, the findings of social science debunk that negative stereotypes will discuss. Research shows that authentically committed Christian men test out as the most loving and engaged husbands and fathers. They have the lowest rates of divorce and domestic abuse of any group in America. The facts, as Nancy discusses in this episode, show decisively that Christianity has the power to overcome toxic behavior in men and reconcile the sexes, which is, to many, an unexpected finding that has stood up to rigorous empirical testing. We'll also discuss the following issues how the secularization of American culture has shaped a toxic script for masculinity. We'll talk about how men are falling behind in education, work and even life expectancy, how Christian men shatter the negative stereotypes, and we'll talk about the father-son relationship and how it is key to overcoming toxic male behavior, and how society can support fathers.
Speaker 1:So sit back, buckle up, and I hope you enjoy this conversation. By the way, if you haven't yet go over to Apple iTunes podcast, you can also do so on Spotify, but leave a five star review. That definitely helps us reach more people with the content of this podcast. And, again, be stay tuned for further conversation with Rich Lask. We'll be going in depth on Nancy's book. In this episode, though, we are going to be interviewing Nancy Piercy, and I hope you enjoy the conversation. Well, welcome to this episode of the Hard Men podcast. I'm your host, eric Kahn, and joined today by a very special guest, nancy Piercy. Nancy, thanks so much for joining me for this episode.
Speaker 2:Thanks for inviting me. I appreciate it.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I'm excited, Nancy, to talk about your book. I've enjoyed reading it. That's the toxic war on masculinity. As I started reading the book, I felt like the place you started, which was talking about your childhood, was a really interesting place to start on masculinity. Of course, a lot of people will say, well, you know, men and patriarchs are abusive. But kind of from the beginning you make the case that that's not necessarily true at all. So I want to ask you about that what was kind of driving? Why get into this subject matter? Why write this book?
Speaker 2:Well, yes, I did put my own story at the beginning because that's one of the reasons I wrote the book. I did have a very abusive childhood. My father was severely physically abusive. Books on abuse will sometimes ask was it open hand or closed fist? And it was closed fist. Yeah, definitely. His favorite was the knuckle fist, you know, to add a sharper stab of pain. So I had to say at the introduction in a sense I've been writing this book my whole life because I had to personally really work through what is a positive biblical view of masculinity. I was interviewed by a Christian psychologist for his podcast and he said well, at least we know you're not speaking from it. I retire, I retire, you know you're speaking from the trenches, you've been there so. So perhaps it gives a bit more credibility to my account because, yeah, I didn't. I'm not coming from a healthy, happy home. I didn't get a head start. It took me a long time to get up to the finish line, so to speak.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, and I think that's helpful for a lot of people. One of the things that I often hear and you address this in the book I found very, very fascinating. A lot of people will say well, you know, the thing is evangelical men, complementarian, patriarchal, whatever you want to call it these men are the most abusive in the church and in society, and so this is something you address as not being true. So I wonder if you would just unpack that for me.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, yeah, that was a big surprise to me as well. You know, I've read all the negative media narratives as well. Electoral men or anyone who holds to some form of male headship in the home is presented as exhibit A of toxic masculinity, and so I'll give you just one example. It was easy to find quotes just a quick Google search, but I'll give you one. This was the co-founder of the Church to Movement, which followed the Me Too movement, and she said the theology of male headship feeds the rape culture that we see permeating American Christianity today. Wow, right, wow and so.
Speaker 2:But what happened is that social scientists, like psychologists and sociologists, were reading these accusations and saying where's your evidence? You're making these charges, but where's your data? So they went out and did the studies, and what they found was exactly contrary to the media narrative. So I cite oh, a dozen or so different studies, but what they found is that evangelical men who actually live it out, who attend church, regularly, test out on top of the heap. They're the best in terms of being loving husbands and fathers. And, by the way, one of the things I get pushed back on is people say well, of course, though I've said they were happy, their husband's sitting right there.
Speaker 1:They had to.
Speaker 2:And in abuse cases. Actually, that's a valid concern, but no, that's not what these were. Most of these studies were not constructed by Christians. These were Christian sociologists who were taking data from these large public databases that are used by politicians, journalists, social scientists and so on, like the general social survey which is done by the University of Chicago. So the women were interviewed separately and even then they still said evangelical wise tested out as the happiest with their husband's expressions of love and affection. Local fathers tested out as the most engaged with their children, in terms of both shared activities, like sports or church youth group, and in terms of discipline, like setting limits on screen time or enforcing bedtime. Evangelical couples have the lowest rate of divorce of any group in America. And then the real surprise was they have the lowest rate of domestic abuse and violence of any major group in America.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And even Christians don't know this. It's not out there in the public. Yet I had to go digging in the academic literature to find this, and that was really the final reason I decided to write the book, because I thought we've got to get this really encouraging, positive information out. Let me sum it up. Sometimes a single quote will kind of crystallize it. So let me give you this month my favorite quote.
Speaker 1:Great, I love it.
Speaker 2:This is my go to. I call him my go to sociologist because he did the largest study and his name is Brad Wilcox. He's at the University of Virginia and, to give you a sense of his stature, he gets published in places like the New York Times.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow, yeah.
Speaker 2:So this is. This is how many Christians get in the New York Times. Brad Wilcox, by the way, is Catholic.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And anyway in the New York Times. Yes, because some people think, well, if he was evangelical, he was out to defend evangelicals. No, he was not.
Speaker 1:Yeah, interesting.
Speaker 2:I'm not sure he was. I'm not sure he was totally happy to find out that evangelical Protestant men test out at the top of you know, above Catholic men, by the way.
Speaker 1:Interesting yeah.
Speaker 2:In in the New York Times. Here's his quote it turns out that the happiest wise, happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. And of course they look especially at the wise because, you know, the stereotype is that these evangelical men are abusive, overbearing, dominion patriarchs. So they talk about the wives. The happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives. Fully 73% of wives who hold conservative gender values and attend religious services regularly with their husbands have high quality marriages, interesting.
Speaker 2:And then he goes on. Isn't that amazing? That's great. And then and actually I like this even even better he goes on and he turns to his fellow sociologists and I, I'm sure you know sociology is a highly secularized field. So he's he's talking to secular people and he says academics need to cast aside their prejudices about religious conservatives and evangelicals in particular. Conservative Protestant married men with children are consistently the most active and expressive fathers and the most emotionally engaged husbands. So this is not, you know, a pep top from a religious leader. You know, this is a solid, empirical research. These are evidence-based findings, and so we should be bold in bringing it into well, first into our churches and then into the public square as well, to show that Christianity really does have a solution to reconciling the sexes, as I put it in my subtitle.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's so interesting, nancy, because one of the things that I remember reading the research on this domestic violence in the culture at large, and a lot of times it's actually women initiating and carrying out a lot of the domestic violence. That surprised me. I assume that it would be the men. But it's also interesting societally because, as we've done away with where we've tried to make war on quote unquote the patriarchy, feminism has increased and grown. You would think that you would see less and less domestic violence, but that necessarily hasn't necessarily been the case. So I want to ask like what do you think society was going on? Is it the 60s feminism? Where did the concept of masculinity as toxic come from? How did it make such inroads into almost every sphere of culture?
Speaker 2:Well, that was a big question. Let me start with the first part, because I do have two chapters on domestic violence and there's two kinds of definitions of domestic violence and that affects the outcome. Some studies have been done counting every hostile act from throwing a pillow across the room to beating somebody to a bloody pulp.
Speaker 1:Yeah, not the same.
Speaker 2:They count that as one act, that's one act of domestic violence. In those studies both men and women pretty much commit the same amount. But if they do studies on, well, who actually was physically harmed or sent to the hospital, then it is primarily men which makes sense. I mean, men are bigger and stronger and it's not that they're more evil, but they can do more damage, just physically speaking. It's important to realize. I make that distinction carefully in one of the later chapters.
Speaker 2:But your second question was where did the concept of toxic masculinity come from? That's really what I wanted to answer in the book, because I am an apologist at heart, in the sense of I want to defend Christianity On this issue. I want to defend the biblical view of masculinity. I'm asking why did the secular world get masculinity so wrong? Many people will say well, maybe it started in the 1960s with the second wave feminism. No, you actually have to go much further back. You have to go back to the Industrial Revolution. Before then men worked side by side with their wives and children all day on the family farm, the family industry, the family business, and so the ethos expected of men was much more focused on caretaking.
Speaker 2:The very concept of authority meant who has responsibility for the common good. Authority didn't mean I get to do what I want and everyone has to. I can boss everyone else around. It was very carefully defined. There was a definition taken from classical republicanism, by the way and it meant whoever has responsibility for the common good. I look out for what's good for me, you look out for what's good for you, but who has responsibility for the good of the whole, which is the common good, whether it's the marriage, the family, the church, the civil society and so on? And so the favorite word of the day was the person. And authority was supposed to be disinterested, meaning he was not supposed to look out for his interest because he was the one who was looking out for the interest of the whole. And in fact men were. Fathers were expected to be as involved with their children as mothers were, so much so that most literature on childeering back then, which would be sermons and pamphlets and advice manuals, were addressed to fathers.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:If you go into a typical bookstore today, most of them are to mothers. Back then they were to fathers, because fathers were considered to be the ones with the primary responsibility. Yes, mothers had more involvement in the early stages with birth and breastfeeding and so on, but fathers were considered the primary parent when it came to intellectual and spiritual education of their children.
Speaker 1:Wow, that's interesting, isn't?
Speaker 2:that fascinating. That was one of my most interesting points. And, by the way, later you see the change when you see the disappearance of men, of fathers, from the childeering manuals. So that happens after the Industrial Revolution. So let's go there. The Industrial Revolution takes work out of the home and, of course, men have no choice but to follow their work into offices and factories. And for the first time in American history, men were not working alongside people they loved and had a moral bond with. They were working as individuals in competition with other men. And this is when you actually start to see the literature change, long before feminism, by the way, a lot of these were Christians, in fact Christian women, saying what's happening to our men? They are losing the caretaking efforts they had when they were actually working day in, day out at home. They're becoming egocentric and self-interested and greedy and acquisitive and ambitious and look out for number one make it at all costs. This is the kind of language that starts appearing in the literature of the day.
Speaker 1:Is this early 1800s-ish? Is that time frame? Yes, good point.
Speaker 2:Okay, historians usually say the Industrial Revolution was like from 1750 to 1850. Okay, okay, roughly. And also this men were becoming secular earlier than women did. Because, as the Industrial Revolution creates these large public institutions, businesses and factories and financial institutions and universities, and, of course, the state, people began to argue that these public institutions should be run by scientific principles, by which they meant value free, in other words, don't bring your private values into the public realm, which is what we still hear today.
Speaker 2:And since it was men who were getting that secular education and working in that secular environment, they became secular in their thinking and the biblical ethic lost its hold on men's hearts. They kind of tried to straddle the two with a sacred secular split You've heard that term right? Oh yeah, so they would operate by secular principles at work, but then they would come home and act like Christian family men again, and of course that doesn't really work over the long haul.
Speaker 1:No.
Speaker 2:But you see, in the literature of the day you actually see this people complaining that a man are becoming split. They're using one set of ethics for this public realm and a different set of ethics when they come home at night. So that was actually part of the observations that people were making at the time, in other words. So if you want to really understand where the negative language applied to men, that really happened right after the Industrial Revolution.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so fascinating.
Speaker 2:And people didn't like it. They were protesting it, of course.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I even remember reading like Ann Douglas, and she's talking about like early 1800s and it's so interesting because she's like actually in the patriarchal home. So this is like somebody or a feminist, you know, leaning and all that stuff saying actually pre-Industrial Revolution, like the mothers were revered, like because they were cared for, you know, people were together. You see a big shift happening early to mid 1800s, post-industrial Revolution. It makes me wonder, though how do we like today, you can't like go back to before the Industrial Revolution, right? So what do people do about it?
Speaker 2:Well, I do, of course, have to answer that question in the book. So I have a whole chapter on practical ways in which we might be able to flex the workplace even today. And that pandemic actually had a silver lining in that a lot of fathers discovered that they do like working from home and being closer to their family. This is not in the book because it just came out. A Harvard just did a study where 68% of fathers said during the pandemic they got closer to their children and they don't want to lose that.
Speaker 1:That's great.
Speaker 2:They want to have some sort of hybrid situation. They don't want to go back full time to the office. I'll give you one anecdote. Sometimes that helps crystallize that.
Speaker 2:One of my graduate students was married is married to an IT professional who came home during the pandemic and because he was home he was able to be more involved with the family's home schooling. He decided he would be the one to make lunch every day. He could take his kids to soccer practice and music lessons. He was picking up so many of their family responsibilities that his wife my student was able to start a part-time business, and the whole family benefited from the added income. She's an opera singer, by the way. She started a voice studio. That's cool.
Speaker 2:I thought that was pretty cool. So I interviewed her husband and he said our family is so much more balanced now. He said I am never going back to 40 hours in a cubicle. And then the final kicker was this though he said the time that I used to spend commuting to work, I now spend praying every morning with my wife. Oh, wow. So I thought that really crystallizes what can happen with home-based work, or a better balance of working home. And I'm not saying it's best for everyone. I'm saying it's best for families with young children. So my big concern is the long-term solution to toxic behavior in men, of course, is better fathering. I quote a psychiatrist who said we're not going to have a better class of men until we have a better class of fathers, and I think he's right. But the long-term solution is to get fathers reconnected, especially to their sons.
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Speaker 2:The National Fatherhood Initiative. Yes, I thought that was funny because you're right. Even women who said they were not very religious or not religious at all said where can dads learn how to be better dads than they said? The church? Yes.
Speaker 1:Well, it ties into something too. I think that is often misunderstood. You talk about this in the book, but sort of the different scripts for masculinity. I remember being a teenager I was in Boy Scouts. We did a lot of outdoor stuff. There was a season in my life where I was like being a man is doing outdoorsy things and being sort of macho. Then there was a time where you start having a family and you're like, okay, well, now I have to be really gentle and I have to control my temper when my toddler is throwing food at me and all sorts of different aspects of masculinity. But I wonder if you would talk about those two aspects and how you parse them in the book.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I'm glad you asked that, because there is a backstory to this which is not in the book, so I'll let you.
Speaker 1:Oh cool.
Speaker 2:It's even to be the most controversial book I've ever written. That was a surprise to me. Interesting Because I have an earlier book on Love they Body, which is on abortion, homosexuality, transgenderism, which is really exploding today. But I taught the manuscript in my classes. I led many reading groups. I like to get a lot of feedback on my books. Rub Off the Rough Edges.
Speaker 2:When they told their family and friends that we were going through a manuscript on masculinity, invariably the first question was who side is she on With that tone? Men tended to assume I was a male bashing feminist, but progressives tended to assume I was an angry, defensive reactionary. I actually put this study at the front of the book because it shows that there are really two competing scripts. This was done by sociologists. He's not a Christian but he's well known in his field and gets invited to speak all around the world. He came up with this really clever experiment where he would ask young men two questions. The first question was what does it mean to be a good man? If you're at a funeral and in the eulogy somebody says he was a good man, what does that mean, the sociologists said all around the world? Young men had no trouble answering that, they would say things like duty, honor, integrity, sacrifice. Do the right thing, look out for the little guy, be a protector, be a provider, be responsible. The sociologists said where'd you learn that? The men said it's just in the air we breathe. Or if they were in a Western country, they would often say it's part of our Judeo-Christian heritage. Then he would ask a second question what does it mean? If I say to you, man up, be a real man? The young man would say oh no, that's completely different. That means be tough, be strong, never show weakness. Suck it up, play to win. Win at all costs. That's what. Win at all costs, be competitive, get rich, get laid. I'm using their language. The sociologists concluded that this is fascinating.
Speaker 2:Young men do have an inherent, innate knowledge of what it means to be a good man. We would say they're all made in God's image. Of course they do have a sense of what it means to use their masculine strengths for good, not just to get what they want, but to help the love, provide, to protect those that they love. But they also feel this cultural pressure to be the quote, unquote the real man, which tends to include those traits we might consider more toxic, at least if they're separated from the ideal of the good man. What I suggest, as we do with this info, is number one most men don't respond well to being called toxic, surprise, surprise.
Speaker 2:So it would be a better strategy to try to tap in to their innate sense of what it means to be a good man, that they do know. This Can we support, affirm and encourage them in being the good man that they already do know. And then, secondly, I think from a polygenic's perspective, it shows that when we promote a Christian ethic of manhood, we're not imposing something alien. Some secular ideals of masculinity you say, well, christian, going all the way back to Nietzsche or coming all the way up to Andrew Tate. Some secular views of masculinity would say well, the Christian view is weak or soft or whatever. But no, the Christian view fits with who men intrinsically are. They do know what the good man is, so we're not imposing an alien standard on them. So I think it helps also in just being able to communicate better with non-Christians.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, big time. And that's something I've noticed too. A couple of years ago, when I started writing about masculinity, there was this like it's a competition of sorts because you've got guys like Andrew Tate who are they're playing on things that men can be played on. You know where it's like. You know, fast women, fast cars, fast money, all this stuff. And at the time as a Christian pastor, I'm saying, okay, I understand why that's appealing to men, like men are made to take dominion and build families and some semblance of wealth and those things in the world. But there's a very there's a Christian way to do that. And then there's the, you know, the Andrew Tate way, or whoever else.
Speaker 1:We've often said it's sort of like Absalom. You know, there's guys in our camp who are willing to steal the hearts of young men. Those men really are desperate. And that is one thing I really appreciate, you addressing the book, that we do have to stop and say what are the problems men are facing? Right, there are real problems. We have to not just say, well, you know, we've seen all the articles I think you mentioned one with the Washington Post where it's like, can we just get rid of men? Like, are men even necessary. I've seen the TikTok videos on this and they're like. All the women are like no, absolutely not. I'm like, well, even biologically though, honey, that there is actually a requirement for masculinity. So why is it important to address, you know, the real problems that men are facing in the world today?
Speaker 2:Well, I'm glad you started with that Washington Post piece, because it was the actual wording was why can't we hate men?
Speaker 1:Why can't we hate them? Yes?
Speaker 2:And I was really stunned when I read that Really the hostility is becoming so socially acceptable or often can post editor to tweeted hashtag kill all men. You can buy T-shirts that say so many men, so little ammunition.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:There are also books titled I hate men, no good men. And then the one you mentioned, which is our men necessary? But Nana, jumping on the bandwagon to one well-known male author, wrote talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer.
Speaker 1:Oh, wow.
Speaker 2:And then you probably saw this one because it was in the news maybe a few months ago now. James Cameron, they directed the movie. Avatar. Yes, testosterone is a toxin.
Speaker 2:Yes, and they have to work at Audrey's system. So I think this is one reason I did want to write the book. I wanted to get to the bottom of it. Where is this coming from? But also, what you just mentioned is that ironically, it's coming out at a time when men are actually falling behind on many measures. Boys are falling behind at all levels of education, starting in kindergarten, because they can't handle scissors as well, all the way up to college. The average college now is 60% women, 40% men, including the college where I teach. I've been here 10 years at Houston Christian University. When I came it was 70, 30. Wow.
Speaker 1:That's not unusual.
Speaker 2:In fact, some colleges like Harvard are now quietly doing affirmative action to get more male students.
Speaker 1:Really that's, crazy.
Speaker 2:Not because I just read this today, by the way, not because they want more male students, but because girls won't come If they're not going to meet some cool guys. Yeah exactly.
Speaker 2:By the way, this was in an article that just came out. You will love it. I haven't finished reading it because it came out just before we came on the air here. It's called the Misogyny Myth. It's in a journal called City Journal. Interesting. They start with the statistics on men falling behind. That was one of them. The colleges, but also graduate school. More women than men go to graduate school. More women than men go to professional schools like law and medicine. Then, when they're adults, men are falling behind on many numbers, both relative to women and relative to where men were in the past. The more likely to commit suicide, be drug and alcohol addicted, be homeless, commit crime. 90% of prison inmates are male. Be victims of crime. Life expectancy has actually gone down in recent years. Women's have stayed the same, men's has gone down. Yeah, so it's not a general trend.
Speaker 1:I don't know if it was you in the book writing about this or somebody else, but I think a lot of that was suicide related and depression anxiety as well.
Speaker 2:Right, they're calling them deaths of despair. Yeah, a lot of them are suicide. But there was a journal called the New Scientist that said the major demographic factor for early death now is being male. Oh, and unemployment.
Speaker 2:This was another one that shocked me. So unemployment is now at depression era levels and it's not showing up in the normal statistics because they stopped looking for work. So the researchers had to dig a little deeper, but they tell us that male unemployment is at depression era levels. I mean, that is shocking. So I do think it's time for us to start asking what's happening to our boys and men and is there something we can do for them? You know goals, for example the Gender Equity Act 1994, millions of dollars into helping girls, and that was great. You know equity workshops and training materials and so on, and that was wonderful.
Speaker 2:So we don't want to sound like we think it's bad that girls are getting ahead. It's great that they're taking advantage of their opportunities. But it is time to ask well, do we need to start some comparable programs for boys now? Now that boys are having more trouble in school than girls, I think we should have compassion. The bottom line is, can we have compassion on the fact that men are doing worse, and can't we maybe look at some programs to help them out?
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, that's exactly right. I remember even going through college, liberal arts, and you know I got out and I was like, well, you know, women are the victims and everything. That was sort of the education. And then I read like Christina Hoff Summers, and like the War Against Boys, stuff like that, and it was exactly what you're saying, like it's actually the data bears something out very differently than you might think. It is interesting to me something I want to ask you about. You mentioned, but with the book this has been the most controversial one. That's a little surprising again, because it's not the transgender and homosexuality and that's that sort of issue. Why do you think masculinity, why that issue of all issues, would be, I don't know, toxic? Why is it? Why is it such a fire starter?
Speaker 2:Have you been on Twitter lately?
Speaker 1:Yes, I have been.
Speaker 2:The day the book came out. Now I was telling you about the controversy while it was still in the process.
Speaker 1:I wasn't even out yet at that point.
Speaker 2:Right, right, I was just teaching. I was teaching the manuscript and running reading groups on the manuscript. The day after the book came out, a huge Twitter storm erupted on my Twitter feed and took it over for three or four weeks, and it was Christian egalitarians who thought that the book well, I'll give you the exact words I'm a ammunition to those complementarians which is evil and dangerous, and bad and I said, well, wait, I don't actually engage the complementarian egalitarian debate in my book, right, you noticed when you read it, and the reason for that was twofold.
Speaker 2:There were two reasons. One is that's not what the social studies were done on. The studies were done on evangelicals without defining whether they were you know what their gender theory was. So, yes, many of them do hold male headship in the home. But then the studies asked them what they meant by that too. But let's start with that.
Speaker 2:These were social scientists who were aware that this secular world is jumping on evangelicals, is making evangelicals into an enemy, into a bad guy, into a boogeyman, and so they said, well, we need some data on this, let's go look at it. So they were not in this tiny little box. You know this in-house debate among evangelicals. They were looking at how evangelicals are being attacked by the greater society, and so that's what initiated their study. So I was looking at evangelicals. Secondly, the other reason, which you probably noticed when you read the book, is that two of my top researchers said that a husband's gender theory does not actually play a big role in the quality of his marriage. So this was Brad Wilcox, who I'll read. I'll read it mentioned and quoted. Who is at the University of Virginia and he says in my research the husband's gender theory does not seem to play much difference in how happy his wife is and how good their marriage is. In fact, he actually conducted one study specifically on egalitarians and said they're not any happier.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:You know our findings are, you know, because he, like all of us, assumed well, probably they would be right that a egalitarian marriage would be more respectful to the wife, for example. Most of us would assume that. And he said we just didn't find that. You know, when we did the actual study, we because he had another sociologist with him we did not find that they were not any happier. So he concludes that the husband's gender theory is not what's important. By the way, what is important, what is important is whether the husband thinks the family is the most important thing in his life.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And he's not just a family centric, whether he thinks the family is a founding institution of society. If you know, his family-centered worldview had a greater impact on whether he had a good marriage.
Speaker 1:That's really really interesting, Isn't that great?
Speaker 2:I love it, and then the others. So I said I had two of my top researchers saying this. The other was John Gottman. Gottman is perhaps the leading marriage psychologist in the nation and he used to be a mathematician, so he's got these very quantitative reports. He brings couples into a lab that's outfitted like a bed and breakfast and he wires them up to test their heart rate and their breathing rate and their sweat rate and their stress hormones. And he has elaborate codes for gestures like rolling your eyes, and, of course, for language, from put downs to placating and everything in between. And then he feeds all this into a computer and he's become famous because within about a 15-minute observation period, he can predict with 93.6 accuracy whether a couple will divorce Interesting, and even when. Yes. That's how he got famous.
Speaker 1:This is like the sabre metrics of baseball for marriage. That's what this is, isn't?
Speaker 2:that great and even when, by the language they use, he says this couple will last seven years, this couple will last 15 years.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Anyway, I just wanted you to know who we're talking about here. And he says did I say he's Jewish? He's Jewish, okay, even though he was the young miracle.
Speaker 1:Oh yes.
Speaker 2:His worldview is very secular. Nonetheless, his worldview is secular. But he says the couples coming into my practice, some of them believe that the man should be in charge of the marriage and of his wife. And we get others who come in who are very egalitarian. And he said you know what? It doesn't seem to make a difference. What matters is and here's how he puts it emotionally intelligent husbands. That's his phrase. Yeah, emotionally intelligent husbands have figured out the most important thing, which is how to convey honor and respect to your wife.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:And I was stunned, so I put that in the book. I said I'm not dealing with egalitarian and complementary issue, and here's why. And then, like I said, the day after the book came out, my Twitter page exploded with egalitarians who were taking me to task. She's a public figure, so I'll say her name is Sheila Gregoire. Do you know Sheila?
Speaker 1:Yeah, she's come after me quite a bit Surprisingly, even on like I don't know. I guess she would be kind of like a hard egalitarian but just sort of like any of the basic statements about even if you're like husbands and wives are kind of like equals in marriage, hierarchically she will usually take issue with a lot of that.
Speaker 2:Well, the thing is, she hadn't read it, she hadn't read the book yet. That's problematic, and she has a 40,000 membership group, and so what she does is she tells all of her followers you know, pile on.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah.
Speaker 2:And so they piled on.
Speaker 1:That's free publicity, by the way. Thank you.
Speaker 2:My number of Twitter followers has greatly expanded, yep, but after about three or four weeks I finally got defended in an article. Do you know the publication Mirror Orthodoxy? Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah, Jake Meador.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So Jake Meador wrote a short article defending me. She had taken me to task on some historical point and he defended me, saying she's just doing responsible history.
Speaker 2:She's being an empathetic history writer, I was empathizing with some of the anti-suffragists and I was explaining their reasons for it, that it really was a switch in political philosophy that was driving them. And then, of course, sheila said Nancy's against women having to vote. I was trying to explain the shift in political philosophy. This was just an illustration, but anyway, and you'll appreciate this, eric, then when that died down, then the conservatives came out of the hot woodwork.
Speaker 1:You can't make anybody happy, Nancy.
Speaker 2:That's the way Twitter works, peter Leithhart. You know Peter Leithhart, yeah, so he had written a positive review in the journal First Things and he had said that in my book I had interpreted the word help in Genesis, when God creates Eve to be a help, in Hebrew it's E-Z-E-R and it's translated help, but that just doesn't have the same connotations in modern English that it did in the Hebrew, because in the Hebrew it's used of God, most often used of God, so it clearly doesn't mean an inferior or subordinate position. Well, that set off all the complementarians. I couldn't believe it.
Speaker 1:I said wait a minute.
Speaker 2:I'm just giving you the accurate translation. And they said you're denigrating women's domestic role. And I had to say to them I've worked from home most of my life. I had home births, I did home schooling. I'm a real home person. That's right.
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Speaker 1:That's right. I think it was like the other day he writes for the blaze. But Orin McIntyre really helped me with understanding Twitter. He said here's the thing people think Twitter is a place for honest debate. He's like Twitter is the Coliseum. People come here for blood and I was like okay, I understand what's going on here, but yeah, it is a really difficult issue and I think it gets to kind of where we can close. But just thinking about like, okay, there's all these dynamics culturally, even within the church we've got all these different positions. Gender and sexuality is, for whatever reason, it's a very frontline issue. So, as you're thinking about, you know, with the book you're telling people like okay, here's what you can do, here's how we can sort of regain some of this cultural ground game that we've lost. What sorts of things do you point to and would you point to as paths to victory?
Speaker 2:Well, you know, let me pick up on what I was just saying. You know I have been a promoter for years in my writings and trying to recreate a more colonial style home, the homestead, you know, trying to bring some of the functions back home. You know, the industrial revolutions started by taking work out of the home, but pretty soon all kinds of other things that were traditionally done by the family were taken out of the home. Women's work, for starters, because a lot of household manufacturer was done by women. They lost their economic productivity at things like school education is a huge one care of the sick, care of the older people. So there were a whole raft of things that had traditionally been done in the home, you know, by family members. And, of course, when families have more functions that draw them together, they're going to be, it's going to be stronger family. You know, they have greater ties.
Speaker 2:In the 1950s there were some sociologists who were writing on this issue and they said and they tried to put a positive spin on it they said, oh, when all of these economic and other functions were taken out of the home, it left just emotional connection. That means the emotional connection can be stronger. That's just not true, right? What are you going to? What are you going to relate about? You know, but if there's nothing happening in the home except you know TV and social media, you know what is the family relating around, you've got to have something to relate around, and so and that's why I've been a big advocate of homeschooling, for example, and home-based work if you can do it.
Speaker 2:A lot of homeschooling families have are experimenting with having various kinds of home-based work. So, once again, it's the parents who can be teaching their kids the skills they need for the adult world. And, like I said, the pandemic was a game changer for both men and women. It helped people to see that a lot of things could be done from home that people did not think could be done from home, and, as I just mentioned, I even had home births for both of my boys, and so I've always been a big advocate of bringing back the homestead you know, as much as you can.
Speaker 2:And, by the way, we also have to persuade the business world that this is going to work. So I did include quotes in my book from CEOs who said things like this. This was once. Ceo said you know, we were always hesitant to allow for remote work because we were afraid people would slack off. And then he said and this is a direct quote, he said the pandemic completely exploded, that fear, we did not see any drop in productivity. And so I and I so I quote a couple of CEOs saying things like hey, you know what, if you give fathers the time to be better fathers, they actually make better workers.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:You know they may not come in on Saturdays and so on like a single man might, but when they're on the job they're more focused, they're more, they're more intentional and they've got better skills. Like you said a minute ago, when you started having kids, you'd found out oh, I have to be gentle patients. Wait a minute Now. Skillinity includes these other dimensions that maybe we hadn't thought of. And, by the way, one of my favorite parts of the book is to get men to want to be fathers. Again, I have a section on how men themselves benefit from becoming fathers. You know I have no problem appealing to those self-interest. Yes, and so what? What sociologists have found is that, first of all, they interviewed men who said I never knew how fulfilling fatherhood would be, because our culture doesn't teach that. Our culture implies that, and then we'll find the greatest fulfillment at work and work and career.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:And, by the way and that goes back to the Industrial Revolution, because that was that was in the literature of the time people began to complain that men were turning work and career into an idol really exact word they were using back then.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:Anyway. So I interviewed. I have interviews with men who said oh, I've. You know, I had no idea becoming a father would be so much fun, even John Lennon. John Lennon decided to stay home with his, with the child that he had with Yoko Ono.
Speaker 1:Interesting.
Speaker 2:And they switched in. For five years he stayed home. He said it was the best thing that ever happened to him. He said I never knew what love was until I raised my son. Oh yeah.
Speaker 1:No, it's such a game changer. I remember, yeah, even in working in retail for years, I had a guy who was a he was a pagan, but he was an area manager and he told me he said, yeah, I like hiring guys with families. And I said why? He said men with families and children work different. And I was like, wow, that's really insightful. Actually, it's pretty helpful, especially if you're on the employer side and you're thinking, well, do I want to support all this? Yes, you do that. Long term, it is going to more than likely benefit you, your company and the product. So, yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2:And the other aspect of that I mentioned in the book is that men's biochemistry actually changes when they have children. We knew that women's biochemistry changes, that things like oxytocin goes up. Oxytocin is the bonding hormone, so it gives you a little boost in bonding with your newborn.
Speaker 2:But they found that men's fathers oxytocin goes up too when they have a child. They have to be actively holding and playing with the child because apparently it's triggered by tactile sensation, so they have to be actively involved. And then here was the real surprise. This was the most recent book I read is by an anthropologist. They now have found that men's oxytocin is going up during his wife's entire pregnancy. Apparently, no one ever sought to test a man's blood when his wife was pregnant, but when they did they found that he's being biochemically primed to be an active, engaged father. God has programmed the male biochemistry to be an active and involved father.
Speaker 2:I think, this is fascinating. One psychologist calls it the dead brain that there's an actual nest of neurons that doesn't get activated unless a man becomes a father.
Speaker 1:That's so cool.
Speaker 2:It activates the dead brain.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's so cool. I remember reading that Andrew Huberman has something about it. But even like baby, weight in men is a lot times due to the hormonal changes in men, which they basically the pheromones of the woman will change the hormones in the men, so he actually gains weight. And he said, yeah, actually, of course they're evolutionary psychologists, but they're like, yeah, basically throughout history, men's bodies somehow know how to adapt to the fact that when they're going to have sleepless nights and long seasons of tireless work and all that, they're going to need more fat stores. I was like, wow, or God is an incredible designer. That's what happened. But it's amazing, it really is. What an encouragement to become a father.
Speaker 2:You can develop dead brain right, exactly Because, you see, the problem is that in Christian circles they often get a negative message. This is one of my graduate students was the head of a women's ministry in a large Baptist church here in Houston and she said on Mother's Day we hand out roses and tell mothers they're wonderful. On Father's Day we scold the men and tell them to do better.
Speaker 1:Yes.
Speaker 2:And so I was very careful not to take a scolding tone. In this book I wanted to give positive reinforcement, and in those two key ways the chapter on fatherhood, which we just talked about, and then the earlier talk on the social science research on Christian men. Oh, we should, in order to add balance. We should add that not all evangelical men test out their way, because otherwise we can be accused of being rose-colored glasses. One of the main pushbacks I get, of course, is that Christians divorce at the same rate as the rest of the culture, right? So the social scientists went back and they carefully separated out the data so that they had the Christian evangelical men who were really actively involved in their churches from the nominal Christian men. By the way, my students don't even know what nominal means, so I have to explain N-O-M is Latin for name, so it means in name only, and so these are men who might check the Baptist box, for example, on a survey like this.
Speaker 1:They don't actually go to church or be members or G-Exactly Exactly.
Speaker 2:There's more family, background, cultural Christianity. Well, these men test out shockingly different. Their wives report the lowest level of happiness.
Speaker 1:N-Interesting.
Speaker 2:G-They spend the least amount of time with their children. These nominal Christian couples have the highest rate of doors. And then the real shocker is they have the highest rate of domestic abuse and violence, higher than secular men, n-that's really interesting, g-and so this? It's fascinating.
Speaker 2:This is why the numbers are often skewed, because if you don't separate them out, you're going to get men who are better and secular men, and men who are worse and secular men. So you get misleading statistics, and it also tells you what the church is up against. I think too, on the one hand, we should be encouraging the men who are doing a good job stop the scolding, give them a positive affirmation and, on the other hand, I think we need to reach out to these men who are kind of at the fringes, who are claiming an evangelical identity N-Yeah nominalism.
Speaker 2:G-But who actually take right. They're taking words like hedgehog and submission, but they're in importing meanings to those terms from the secular script, from masculinity of dominance and control and entitlement and so on, and then just having a Christian label on it, and then they end up being actually worse than secular men. N-wow G-According to the studies.
Speaker 1:N-Yeah. You can see the real danger with that too.
Speaker 2:G-Because people have sometimes asked me well, why would they be worse than secular men? Well, apparently they feel that religious justification which makes them worse. In other words, the secular man who's mistreating his wife and kids doesn't feel any kind of religious justification, but the nominal Christian does. He thinks, well, you know, god's okay with this and so, and then he ends up actually being worse than the secular man. So yeah, I think that's a huge challenge for the church is how do we reach out to these men and bring the men and disciple them so that they have a biblical understanding of those terms?
Speaker 1:G-Yeah. No, that makes perfect sense. I can also think back to most like abuse, counseling or anytime there's like really troubled marriages. Usually, what's really bad is when somebody knows the scripture is well enough to use it as a cudgel and to beat somebody over the head with it. So it makes sense how that could be a problem. Nancy, I want to wrap up just with people. Where can they find ways to connect with you? Obviously, you can find the book on Amazon, probably some other places as well. How do they keep in touch?
Speaker 2:G-Yeah, my publisher very kindly created a new website for me, g-oh great. G-nice and colorful. So come over and see it. It's NancyPiercycom and Piercy is P-E-A-R-C-E-Y NancyPiercycom. You can browse my other books. You can see my earlier book on homosexuality, transgenderism and so on that we mentioned earlier. You can even leave a note. I do read the notes. I don't have time to answer them all, but I read them so you can come and say hi. But come on over at NancyPiercycom.
Speaker 1:G-Awesome Well, Nancy, thank you so much. Thanks for writing the book, Thanks for taking the time to come on the show and talk about it. We deeply appreciate that and we'll include links in the show notes where people can check out your website and get a copy of the book for themselves. So thank you very much.
Speaker 2:G-Thanks for having me. It was good talking with you.
Speaker 1:Thanks again for listening to this episode of the Hard Men Podcast and special shout out to our Patreon supporters. If you're not yet a Patreon supporter, you can join today for as little as five dollars a month, and that definitely helps keep this work going. We are glad to partner with you for content that builds a new Christendom and reclaims biblical masculinity. At the same time, you can check the show notes for the link to become a Patreon supporter of the Hard Men Podcast today. Stay frosty, fight the good fight. Act like men.