(29) Dr Warren Farrell and Dad-Deprived Children

Caring for men and boys. This episode focusses on the work of Dr Warren Farrell and is based on 2 interviews, one with Alysse ElHage for the Institute for Family Studies and one with Mark Walsh, of The Embodiment Channel on YouTube. His journey from women’s liberation to the men’s rights movement is described and there is discussion about the important role of dads.

Good Guy of the week is 9 year old Oakley Hughes who was given a ‘Brave Bear Award’ by his school; his quick thinking and actions helped his mum in a tricky situation. 

Transcript

Dr Warren Farrell and Dad-deprived Children

This episode focusses on the work of Dr Warren Farrell and is based on 2 interviews, one with Alysse ElHage for the Institute for Family Studies and one with Mark Walsh, of The Embodiment Channel on YouTube. Links are as always in the episode notes. 

So just to introduce Dr Warren Farrell. I have had the pleasure of hearing him speak at two men’s conferences and I also really enjoyed his contribution to the very informative, moving and highly recommended film that Cassie Jay made, The Red Pill. Jay, a feminist filmmaker, set out to document what she saw as, the mysterious and polarizing world of the Men’s Rights Movement, exploring an alternate perspective from the feminist one on gender equality, power and privilege, which caused her to question her own beliefs. There’s a link to the movie in the episode notes. 

Back to Farrell. He’s an award-winning educator, speaker, and activist who initially came to prominence in the 1970s as a supporter of second wave feminism; he served on the New York City Board of the National Organization for Women (NOW) where he played a key leadership role in the women’s liberation movement.

Farrell was under the impression that the organisation wished to liberate men and women from rigid roles, helping both to shift to more flexible roles; however, he was soon to be disabused of this. As divorces became common in the 1970s, research began to show that children raised without their dads did not do as well as children raised with their dads; while this was true for boys and girls, it was more problematic for boys.

Farrell saw families suffering from fatherlessness and beseeched NOW to support the equal involvement of dads after divorce, but NOW feared losing the support of women members who wanted the option of having primary custody. NOW’s argument was, that this would deprive many women of the right to choose whether they wanted to have the partial involvement or full involvement of the father. Women who may have met a new man, a much better man than their ex-man and who may wish to move to a new area, to place their child in a new school. NOW asserted that mothers know best what their children need, to which Farrell replied, ‘you’re saying female parents know best? How would it be if I said to you, male doctors know best, or male lawyers know best’? NOW wanted him to continue in his role and told him, ‘that research is in its infancy, why not keep quiet for a few years and keep your role’. Farrell’s integrity won out, while his standing ovations temporarily ended, and he lost an estimated income of 10-12 million dollars over his lifetime, he’s OK with that, he’s satisfied that he made a good decision and a worthwhile contribution.

Farrell has been described as the “intellectual father of the men’s rights movement.” Today, he chairs the Coalition to Create a White House Council on Boys and Men; in their efforts to create a White House Council the coalition is

·      investigating the status of boys and their journey into manhood

·      identifying both surface and underlying problems confronting boys and men and

·      creating a blueprint for solutions.

Farrell’s the author of at least eight books on the subject of men’s and women’s issues; he’s probably best known for his 1993 book, reissued in 2014, ‘The Myth of Male Power’. 

He has a deep concern for today's boys, who often struggle with a sense of hopelessness and a lack of purpose, which he links, at least in part, to family breakdown and dad-deprivation.

As the women’s movement went mainstream, Farrell says, he loved the options for women that it created, but he began to feel and became convinced of 

·      an inherent demonizing of men

·      an undervaluing of the family and 

·      a blindness to how boys and men were being harmed. 

All these factors he believed, and rightly so it has been proven, would cause tremendous problems for, a big breath in, families, boys, addiction, careers, women wanting children without the involvement of failure-to-launch dads, male unemployment, the global economy, and more. All these harms were not part of the public consciousness, so Farrell felt he needed to raise awareness of these issues which led to his latest book, The Boy Crisis, with a subtitle of ‘Why Our Boys are Struggling and What We Can Do About It.

Warren has taken issue with gender studies assertion that we inhabit a patriarchal world where women have been dominated by that patriarchy, where men made the rules to benefit men at the expense of women, where men are privileged and entitled. He takes that idea apart.

In his opinion, we haven’t lived in a world dominated by a patriarchy, and I agree with him; rather, we have all been living in a world dominated not by men but by the need to survive, and in order to survive, he argues, both sexes had to play very limited roles; women raising children and men raising money; while women risk their life in childbirth, men risk life in warand have died in wars for the protection of women and children. 

Farrell’s account of the history of masculinity is that men have traditionally been trained not to be privileged or entitled, but to be disposable; he says, ‘men have an obligation to die; they constitute 97% of the people killed at work; a few examples of dangerous work where men risk their lives are in construction, coal mining, working on oil rigs and fire-fighting. From the ages of 14 and 15 in WW1 and from the ages of 16, 17 and18 in WW2, young men went to war and were obliged to die so women, children and the older generation could live’.

The idea of patriarchy comes from radical feminism. In my opinion, gender studies, as it’s been delivered since the eighties, lacks academic integrity; to my mind, it’s a single perspective ideological indoctrination programme  that offers no opportunity for thinking critically about gender. Farrell argues that in order to have academic integrity within gender studies, males, as well as females should represented along with the LGBTQ community; and further, there should be conservative as well as liberal perspectives on the subject. Historically, men and boys have not been included in any positive way in gender studies and Farrell agrees with his interviewer ElHage that boys in particular are ‘a national afterthought’. Indeed, as his most recent book title suggests, he believes boys are in crisis.

Farrell has argued that the number one cause of the boy crisis is dad deprivation and that, ‘the gap between the dad-deprived boys and the dad-enriched boys will become the single biggest predictor of the gap between boys who become economically poor versus boys who become economically rich.’ ‘What happens’ he asks, ‘when boys do not have their father in their life, for whatever reason?’

As we know very well, boys often look to their dads for a role model; but the role model for those boys with minimal or no father involvement, are more what Farrell describes as ‘straw men’ or ‘straw dads.’ Such boys don’t benefit from hang-out time, from overnights or the many hours that it takes for boys to bond with their dads and to develop trust that their feelings won’t be dismissed. 

As we saw in my last episode, dads tend to build bonds with their sons by, for example, playing games and roughhousing; then they use the resulting bond as leverage for their sons to ‘get to bed on time or there’ll be no playing tomorrow night.’ This boundary enforcement teaches boys an important life skill, that of postponing their gratification. Boys with minimal or no father involvement are less able to delay their gratification and they frequently suffer from an addiction to immediate gratification and a much greater likelihood of a long list of problems; another big breath here - video game addiction, ADHD, worse grades in every subject, less empathy, less assertiveness but at the same time more aggression, fewer social skills, more alienation and loneliness, more obesity, a kind of rudderlessness, anger, drugs, drinking, delinquency, disobedience, depression and suicide.

Farrell has great respect for single mums, saying they are among society’s most devoted, giving people; and he says, ‘for their sons to often have so many problems is heart-breaking’. He doesn’t believe it’s mum’s fault, but he has identified something crucial that mums can do.

Let’s look at the predicament and then how mums can help.

When a boy looks at his dad, he sees the man he could become. If his dad is only minimally present, that doesn’t give him much hope that a marriage and children will offer him the emotional satisfaction of being a fully involved dad. I would say that such a boy would probably not even be able to imagine being a fully involved dad.  

Some dad-deprived boys, Farrell tells us, see their dad living in a small apartment after being divorced, having to fight in court to be more involved with them, working in a job they don’t like, to pay for the children they can’t see as much as they’d like. Such experience reinforces and magnifies a boy’s sense of purposelessness and hopelessness.

The mum solution is for her to understand what dads contribute, why their frequent rough-housing together with their tough-love, boundary enforcement, and letting boys work things out for themselves,  which can seem like insensitive parenting, but in fact constitutes a crucial counterbalance to mum’s contribution to the development of their children in general, but to boys’ development in particular. That’s it for this episode. I will of course be returning to the subject of the importance of fathers and also Dr Warren Farrell’s ground breaking work. Meanwhile I recommend his latest book, The Boy Crisis for many more helpful insights into the lives of men and boys and many more practical suggestions. 

Good guy of the week

This week’s good guy is Oakley Hughes, a terrific 9-year-old boy from Telford, Shropshire, in the UK, whose been awarded a bravery bear by his school. He and his mother were out running together when a car spooked their dog.

The dog bolted, knocking mum off her feet, causing her to fall and break her wrist. They managed to get home and Oakley helped his mum and their dog back inside; his mum warned him that she felt faint, and he ran to get their first aid kit; when he returned with the first aid kit his mum had passed out. Quick thinking Oakley grabbed his mother’s phone. Under normal circumstances he would know his mother’s phone pass code but in this high stress situation he’d forgotten it.

This on the ball, very young man held his Mum’s phone, then picked up her motionless handand used her thumb to unlock it. This dear boy Oakley then managed to ring 999, speak to ambulance control and was able to give the operators most of their address. He had the foresight to run out into the street to flag the ambulance crew down. 

Emma speedily got the treatment she needed for her injury and was soon back home. As you might imagine, Emma was extremely grateful for her son’s heroic efforts. “Oakley did a really great job” she said,  “he’s been given a bravery bear from his school and is rightly, very proud of himself". A double thumbs up for Oakley! What an amazing young man!