Dad Secrets for Raising Strong Daughters | Redefining Masculinity with Oscar from Daughtered

What happens when two podcasters swap seats to talk fatherhood and masculinity? In this crossover between American Masculinity and Daughtered, Tim Wienecke and Oscar explore what it really means to raise daughters while rethinking the old scripts of being a man.

This candid conversation blends lived experience with clinical insight. From the fading role of intergenerational fatherhood to the dangers of early sports specialization, Tim and Oscar dive into the challenges modern dads face while raising resilient, confident girls. You’ll hear why presence matters more than perfection, why chores and boredom build stronger kids, and how fathers can model the balance of strength and vulnerability their daughters need to see.

Whether you’re a dad striving to show up better, a clinician supporting fathers, or simply curious about the evolving landscape of masculinity, this episode offers perspective, practical wisdom, and encouragement.

Tune in for a refreshing look at fatherhood—and stay for the powerful reminders about what our kids reflect back to us.

 00:00 Presence, Patience, and Parenting Struggles
 02:00 Why Raising Daughters Needs a Different Conversation
 04:00 The Three Things Every Dad Needs: Strength, Mindfulness, Presence
 07:00 Quality vs. Quantity of Time With Kids
 12:00 The Generational Shift in Fatherhood
 16:00 Masculinity Then and Now
 18:00 Kids Learn More From What You Show Than What You Say
 20:00 Garbage Time vs. Quality Time With Children
 23:00 “Babysitting” Your Own Kids and Household Roles
 25:00 Chores, Happiness, and Over-Involved Parents
 29:00 Nuclear Families, Patience, and Boredom
 32:00 Masculine vs. Feminine Roles in Parenting
 38:00 Modeling Complete Parenthood for Kids
 42:00 Incongruence, Safety, and How Kids Make Sense of Parents
 47:00 Accountability, Boundaries, and Emotions
 50:00 Redefining “Be a Man” and Healthy Masculinity Today
 55:00 Conditional vs. Unconditional Love
 58:00 Veteran Suicide, Service, and Masculine Purpose
 01:02:00 Capability, Confidence, and Failing Forward
 01:07:00 Sports Burnout and Specialization Too Young
 01:10:00 Personal Questions: Rules of Masculinity Learned Young
 01:11:00 When Masculinity Hurts You
 01:14:00 When Masculinity Empowers You
 01:18:00 Partnership, Roles, and Long-Term Marriage
 01:21:00 Fact Check and Closing 

The American Masculinity Podcast™ is hosted by Timothy Wienecke — licensed psychotherapist, Air Force veteran, and men’s advocate.
Real conversations about masculinity, mental health, growth, and how men can show up better — as partners, leaders, and friends.
We focus on grounded tools, not yelling or clichés. If you have questions or want a tool for something you're wrestling with, leave a comment or send a message — your feedback shapes what we build next.
Note: While this doesn’t replace therapy, it might help you notice something worth exploring.

Transcript

0:00

That that's where I started really to like dig deep. And I'm like, all right, this is her time with me right now. If I blow up or if I walk away or I dismiss, I had lost that moment. Children are simple and we as a species make the most fragile children of almost any species. In my in insides. I'm like wanting to crawl out, like I just need to go do 20,000 things, man. But it is a patience game that I think my wife does like a pro. And what happens is, is the minute that a kid doesn't feel like their world is safe, it's usually because their parents, caregivers, or whoever's in charge of them does something incongruent. What does raising a daughter change about being a father and what do fathers need to know to be the best dads they can be to their daughters? If you're curious about the answer to those questions, you're in the right place. My name's Tim Winneke, and this is American Masculinity. And in our 23rd episode, we've partnered with the Daughtered podcast. It's hosted by Oscar Pena. He's a senior enlisted leader in the Air Force who saw a gap in the conversation. So many conversations around parenthood and fatherhood and specific are around raising sons. He saw that there weren't many people talking about how to be good fathers to daughters. And as a father of three little girls himself, it was time to answer those questions. And so he dove right in. And so for the last few years, he's been having conversations with depth and understanding around parenting daughters from a male's perspective. So we're partnering for this episode. I'm bringing my 10 years of clinical experience helping fathers be the best dads they can be. He's bringing his lived experience and his conversations around the topic in so that we can provide you the best information we can. On how to be the dad that you want to be for your daughter. I think you're gonna enjoy it. As you listen, make sure that you're thinking about what kinds of things might change based on this new information and how you show up as a dad or how this might change how a dad in your life could show up. We'll talk more about at the end, we'll see you there. Hey man. Thanks for doing this. This a Guinea pig with me. Like I love how we were trying to figure out who's gonna introduce who, but we're both gonna do a cold intro anyway. Yeah, that sounds good. So I figure we can just let people hear a little bit of the sausage being made. Yeah. So I was really excited when we find each other in Pod Match and we're talking about this because I always like balancing out clinical resources with practical resources. Okay. And so I was really pumped to, to meet you, hear about what you're doing with your podcast, hear about what you're doing with your family. Yeah. And. Hear how well everything's been going. So this should be a really good time. Like, like we were talking about. Yeah, I'm, I'm pretty excited about it. Well, I, I am definitely not the clinical resource, I'll tell you that I'm, I'm the knuckle driver resource you bring in to show you what, you know, what's gone, what's gone awry, and how we fixed it kind of thing. You know what I mean? Well, I think that's the beauty of it. Yeah. Right. Like, uh, like during my divorce, right. I, I counsel guys on how to keep their marriages right, right. Those who can't do teach. So it's nice having somebody do to back up the teaching. Yeah, there you go. You know, it's like the guy writing the manual versus the guy using the manual. Yeah. That could always go bad. Never, never saw it go bad. Well, so I guess we, we can jump in a little bit. Like, I think the, the easiest one to start with would be, what are three things that you want every father to know about raising daughters after all this time and all these conversations, going through some of the episodes that. That I've done. Uh, when I had your, when I saw your question, I was like, let me, let me see where my brain was at, you know, when we first started to mid midpoint to now. And it all leads to, and this makes me very happy because it's part of essentially the, what, what you would call the mantra of the show, right? We're we are trying to create a community of men who want to be stronger, more mindful, more present in their daughter's lives and in the lives of their families. Well, as I started to listen, presence just became what I'm here for. And I say that because I think I knew it. I mean, I know I knew some of it starting the podcast, which is why we went forward and started the podcast. But now having been doing this little over a year, it's evident to me how not present I've been in my daughter's lives, particularly my oldest. And so if I had to say three things, I am lit legitimately telling you you need to figure out how to be strong. And yes, there's a physical aspect to this, but emotional, uh, emotional strength. And then also like psychological strength. How are we dealing with problems of our own and how are our children, our girls watching us deal with those problems? Right? And then the emotional side of keeping your cool when you realize that your kids are mirrors and they're just showing you your flaws, which is insane. Like, it's just, it's crazy. So, so that when, when we say strong, like we want you to be physically strong 'cause that's important, but there's all these other strengths that we need to build on to be better. The mindfulness comes in with that, right? Because my kids. Have constantly called me out on things that I just say like it, like there's no filter. And mm-hmm. Tim, like you and I were talking before, you know, when we, when we had our conversation, we're both military. Like, there's a way that sometimes we just kind of talk and we say things and we, and it doesn't necessarily translate well to the environment of raising my daughters. And, uh, they're quick to call me on it. So being mindful of the, the perception of their eyes to me, how am I being perceived to my daughters? And then not just with them, how do they perceive my relationship with my wife? How do they perceive my relationship with a stranger when I go eat at a restaurant, go to a coffee shop, like they're watching all this. So the, the perception is important. So I need to be mindful of all those things. And then finally, presence, figuring out what presence means to your kid, to your daughter, you know, looking back. Yeah, I always, uh, well, many times I'll say, look at my girls. They're three different heights, right? Like, if you were to put their silhouettes or, you know, here, here and here. And then if you were to have that silhouette, which is black, start filling it in with the presence that I have given them. Mm-hmm. My daughter, my oldest daughter would have the same, if not less than my middle daughter, and then my middle daughter would have more. So essentially that presence would actually be opposite from the little one. It would be up here from the middle one, it'd be up here. And from my oldest it'd be down here. It'd be like a, a, well, I mean, I mean, that's kind of impossible not to have happened. I mean, in your early career, how many times did you deploy? A lot of times, yeah. But here's, here's the issue. It's quality versus quantity, right? Mm-hmm. And I found with, again, through this learning process, I found that with my youngest daughter, the quality wasn't there. It was, you know, I'm trying to learn how to be a new dad. I'm trying to relearn my marriage really, because my wife and I were married for eight and a half years before we had children. So it was just her and I. Yeah. And that's a huge shift. It is huge. And it was a, you know, something that I probably didn't consider well at the time, it was an extreme shift for her, right? She just created a human, changed her entire life. Um, we decided when, when she got pregnant that we wanted to not have our kids in daycare. So she decided she would stay home because obviously I'm in the military, right? We don't have that, that, um, flexibility, if you will. So she went from working all the time and doing things that she was doing to not. So, I mean, her life completely changed and I'm sure I didn't consider all of those things in that moment. And then to add onto that. You know, the frustration of not knowing how to deal with this little thing that cries and asks you for things, but they can't talk and you can't understand them. And, and then Logic Brother Logic doesn't play a hand, right? Because I'm like, I would tell my wife this, physically would say it probably once a day. She's fed, she's changed, she's slept. Why is she crying? Like, like, the logic doesn't make sense to me, right? Mm-hmm. Um, so I can tell you in those early stages, my presence was not there. Even when I was home, my brain was like, how do I escape this? Because I don't know how to do this, and I'm, I'm a fixer. How do I fix this? You, you can't, you gotta learn it. And that's something that I've now learned to do before it was not there. Yeah. Well, that's what I see a lot with my military dads is the military teaches you how to be a mentor and a fixer. You know, the military makes leaders, right? Right. And it's great. And it should, and it's wonderful. But so many guys think that they can take that skill set and just plug and play it into parenting. And you can't. You can't. It's not the same. No. Because there's not a shared mission. And the military, the reason why mentorship works so cleanly and so well is everybody's contributing to the same goal. Mm-hmm. And in a family, that two year old's goal is to get its immediate need met from you, however it can that they're not on the, they're not on the same mission as you. No, they are not. Um, in, uh, I had a, in interview one time where we were talking about how, especially your first child really showed you, or at least highlighted how selfish you are in the sense of like, I like my things in a certain way. Right. I like, I like my day to go a certain way. I like my. Dinner to go a certain way. Like, so you have all these likes that you've gotten accustomed to your, your person. And again, if I add on the marriage, it was just a, you know, her and I, so we had a, we were accustomed certain to a certain way of living, and all of a sudden this, this little thing comes in and Rex saw that, that and there, and you realize like, I really liked this other stuff. Right? And that's part of, and I'm sure you can, uh, you know, tell me way more about this than me, but that's part of the, uh, maturation process. Like you're going to mature through that if you allow yourself to do that. It's unfortunate when we see parents and I, I speak for the dads, like, and I have, I have acquaintances that I've seen this with, where they don't, it feels like they don't mature out of that. Like they still want to go party with their buddies. They still want to go do this thing they still want to do. There's nothing wrong with that except now you have this child, you're. In charge of you're, you're, you know, you're their everything. And I see them sometimes where it's like, dude, you're, you're, you're in your forties, you've got three children and you're still trying to drink like you were in your twenties. Like, how do you, why? Right. I wanna say it's not a judgment, but it's, it's definitely something clear to me that I started to see as I grew as a father. Mm-hmm. But early on it was not like that. I was, it, I think it bothered me that I now didn't have those things I like to do the way I like to do them. Yeah. I, I think it's the, the instinct that we have to stay the same. Yeah. Like there's a, there's a comfort in knowing what I want in my life and what happens next. And the unfortunate part is, it's a story whether you have kids or not. Yeah. Ideally you want different things at 20, at 25, at 30. At 35 and 45. Right. Right. You, you should be moving along in life. But we get stuck on this idea of when I was 20, I did these things, I was happy. Yeah. I wanna go back to that. So I'm gonna do these things, but I can tell you at 45, if I drink like I did when I was 25, I think I'd die. I think I'd die. It's not, it's not good. I think the most I drink now is coffee. It's literally, that's it. Well, I can, I can manage one with friends, uh, after that. It's not worth it, which is really unfortunate. But, so the, the presence thing, uh, I think is probably the, the thing that lines up the best. Like you, the, one of the questions you sent was what are kind of the harmful patterns Yeah. That I see the most of. And I think the biggest one is just the societal shift that dads have had to go through. Right. I think for the last hundred years we've done parenting badly. Okay. At no point in human history. Um, have we been in a spot where one or two people was responsible for everything a child needed? We're supposed to be running around in groups of 20 people doing all the different things we're doing. I see. And the kids are just around for it right now. The fifties happened and we're like, Hey, we've replaced all this labor with all these machines. One person should be able to do everything a kid needs, which is nonsense. Yeah. Housewives are the most mis like talk to base wives, man housewives are some of the most miserable people on the planet because it's too much. Yeah. And then we said, oh, well since they're doing that, we're gonna take dad to the equation and turn dad into a provider. So as long as dad is giving the resources the family needs, that's all he has to do. And because we've been doing that for generations now, guys our age who are trying to show back up into dad, have no idea what we're doing, we've, we've lost kinda a generational memory. Like, I dunno about you man, but my dad and my grandfather were not around. Right. Right. And they were good men. They were good dads. My grandfather was a good grandfather. But they were men of their time. They were working, right? And my grandfather in particularly didn't know what to do with a, like, with children. He was like, you should be quiet when I talk. Right? It was expectation. And so a lot of it is helping guys, one, normalize that they're relearning to do something that we've forgotten how to do, and which means there's gonna be mistakes along the way. That there's no perfection in parenting that, you know, go easy on yourself if, are you trying, are you showing up? All right? Every day, try to show up a little better. That's all we can do. And then two, helping them communicate with their spouses about what's happening so that they, everybody can do it better and see it better, right? Because the other frustration I get from guys is anytime they start making some mistakes, right? They're like, but I'm so much better than my dad. I've never touched my kids. Right? Like, and I've never spanked him. I've never yelled at my kid, right? And I'm, I'm not enough still. And the reality is, which is your people, you're never gonna be enough. If I look backwards, uh, from what you're talking, uh, I don't know that we did it wrong. I just think that they did it. The way they knew how to do it. And, and I say that because it's so weird to talk about, for example, masculinity. Because if you talk about it in, in the terms that you're saying back in, you know, in the context that we're talking about to now, the context now trying to bring that context in this way, it instantly goes through toxic masculinity. Instantly can. Yeah. Right? I mean, the, the first thought of like, oh, the 1950s and 1940s, no, no, no. That's, that's not good. Well, I mean, let's, let's face the 1940s. Those, those dudes went to, to war, and most likely were not coming back. So lot of 'em, right? But, but I'm talking about you, you keep, you know, you, you, then you start keeping, uh, excuse me. You keep going forward and we go into the value of what you're talking about. We value masculinity, but we want like both sides of the, of the scale, right? Mm-hmm. We want that masculine. Dude, to just kind of do, its his thing. And whether we appreciate it or not, that's just your job. It is what you do. It's a masculine trait. Mm-hmm. Right. But then on the other side, we, we, and I, when I say we, we, as far as the society is now asking mm-hmm. For way other things. And all by the way, telling little boys now as they're growing up, you can't be masculine. That's not a good thing. Yeah. Right. So how do you start to figure that out? I, I think we're starting to see that dichotomy start breaking now because of that. The big push that, that we're making with the podcast on it is the idea that there's masculine and feminine traits, and all of us have some of each. Right. If you're a guy, you probably have more of the masculine traits. Yeah. But you don't have all of them in most cases. What I think is going on is we figured out how to make a system work. And I also think it's important to recognize that the fathers of the forties, fifties, sixties, and seventies were good men. Yep. Doing parenting the way they thought they should. Right. This isn't like they were evil for what was happening. These were the commonly accepted wisdoms of the time. Right. But because it was such a narrow definition of what a parent had to be like, a mother has to be a homemaker. A father has to be a provider instead of a family needs to function, which means someone needs to be providing, someone needs to be making a home. And if you look at most modern marriages, now, both people are doing it. Right. Right. Dad's showing up and changing diapers. Mom's doing her work, dad goes off to a business conference. Mom's got it. Somebody comes in and helps out hopefully. Right. And essentially we're leaving more and more room for people to be their complete selves. Because the other thing that I, that I teach guys around parenting is your kids aren't gonna learn from what you tell them. They're gonna learn from what you show them. Yeah, absolutely. You can tell 'em your values all day long, but if they don't see you living them, if they don't see you showing up with that presence you were talking about Right. They're not gonna see you and they're not gonna be part of that. Right. And so you have to be there for it. And it was interesting hearing you talk earlier about the, you know, the quality time versus a lot of time. I kind of disagree, man. Like the, the, I like how Scott Galloway puts it. He's like, my best parenting moments are in the garbage time that drives to the school, the going into the soccer game, the, the, you know, when there's nothing planned and I'm just in the car with my kid. Yeah. And what I notice is whenever I hear guys talk about their dads, all of their kind of keystone memories where it was just them and their dad was in the car. Right. It was on the way to something. And I think it's because we live too fast. And I also think we, we do a really bad job of overburdening children where like every minute of their life has to be planned for some kind of activity where they're gotta be on the way to something, to be on the way to the next thing as opposed to just. You know, every now and then kids should just be in a field with some other kids, right. Figuring out how to throw rocks. Right, right. Like their kids. Well, I think that's what I mean by quality. Like, you're absolutely right, dude. I, I mean, I, I'm, I'm working anywhere from eight to 15 hours a day, right? Mm-hmm. And if I'm lucky, I'll get home. Uh, luckily we do have family dinner every night. Um, for the most part, we, we are able to sit down and it's really a short dinner, right? I mean, once you make dinner, that takes time. And then once you sit down, it's maybe 30, 30 minutes, 40 minutes. Yeah. But 30 minutes every day. It's important. It is. And, and I think the quality of that is important. And I think that there's it very easy to get distracted now. Very easy. Not that it, not that it didn't have distractions before, but I mean, literally we have one in our pocket or in our hand. We have just, it's just a lot of distraction and being able to put that away for a minute and just say. Well, these, I only have 20 minutes with you today, but let's do those 20 minutes. Right. It could be that 20 minute to the, to the, uh, drive to the whatever sport thing. Right? But it's interesting the way that my daughters and I do it. My, my middle girl, she does gymnastics and it's like 40 minutes from here. It's ridiculous. Like I, I, I, I would try to justify it, but I don't even know how so, but it's 40 minutes from here, so we'll drive, and it's kind of cool because I don't, I, I can't be on my phone. I'm driving, right? Mm-hmm. She likes music. So she'll ask me like, first thing she'll be like, can you put a song on? Alright, cool song. Everything's chill song goes away and all of a sudden she starts chatting and now I'm listening and I'm asking her questions, and then it'll just stop chatting. And then she'll ask me for another song. Like, okay, another song that's, but that little bit, it kind of ebbs and flows in and out, right? But I, but I like a natural cadence of conversation and I. And she sees me there, whether she wants to talk to me or just listen me, uh, listen to music with me. And we find this weird cool, like, time together. And it, you know, I think part of it is I'm not distracted with my phone. Yes, I have, I'm watching the road and, and that kind of thing, but I'm, but I have her with me. So those, that's what I'm talking about. I used to get annoyed going to the store. Hey, I'm gonna go to the store. I gotta grab, you know, whatever, two, three things, milk, eggs, you know, you name it. And my daughter would be like, can I come with you? I'm like, no. I just, I wanna run in, grab it and wanna run out. Right? Like, I don't go shopping, I just, I go buy stuff. Like, that's the way I work. Mm-hmm. And I remember one day my wife was like, dude, she just wants to go hang out with you. And it just clicked. I'm like, of course she does. Like, why would I say no to that? That's the easiest thing to do. And sure enough, we'll have a 10 minute drive over to the, to the grocery store and then we'll have some laughs in the grocery store and we'll come back and, and it, it turns out to be 20, 30 minutes of nonsense. But it's undistracted and it's just for us. And that's what I'm talking about with quality. I, I mean, trust me, man, if I can get the quantity and the quality absolutely right. But beggars can't be choosers. So if I can get the quality, then I'll take that. Right? And, and that's where we as fathers need to check, check ourselves, because very easily I can not give quality. I've got work on my mind. I've got my next, you know, uh, work trip, thinking about this, thinking about that. And it's hard sometimes to quiet those things and actually be here, like be present. Mm-hmm. I'm lucky that my wife every so often will tap me in the back of the head and like, Hey, where are you? Like, be here. Right? Mm-hmm. And it, and it's awesome because it, that little bit of just kind of a, a light that she gives me, brings me right back. And so that's the quality that I want to give my daughters. Well, and I love that, that she's. Able to make those corrections with you. Yeah. The, uh, the other thing that I see that's important is there's this, we're moving away from it. You don't hear about it as much anymore, but for so long it was whenever you'd see a dad out with his kids and his daughters be like, oh, how'd you get stuck babysitting? Right. Yeah. It's his, it's that's his kids shut the, yeah. Like that is the dumbest thing I've ever heard anybody say to a parent. Yep. Right. But, but we participate in it sometimes. Oh, yeah. Yeah. Because it feels good, like, yeah, I'm a good guy. Right. I'm a good guy, right. Yeah, exactly. I'll get some brownie points. I'm, but you're absolutely right. And I, and I'll be dead honest with you, I was one of those guys, I never thought of myself babysitting, but when we had the conversation with another dude, I'm like, oh yeah, I'm babysitting this week. And I can't tell you when it shifted, but it, it was a while ago, luckily, but it absolutely shifted. I'm like, these are my kids. Like, you know, worst case scenario if my wife left or disappeared or, you know, God forbid died. I'm not babysitting, they're my children. Like, I have to figure this out. Yeah. Um, and it, and it clicked for me in a weird way because that mindset has always been in my mind and with, especially with my girls, like, Hey, I don't help your mother with the household chores. I just like, we keep a house together. That's right. Like, we're both here. We both have to keep it clean. We both have to, you know, like we, we are working as a team and so the girls are just like, they're like, I don't say, Hey, go help your mother. I say, Hey, go do something. Go do this. Yeah. Go do that. Right. Yeah. Um, if it needs to be done, I think that's brilliant. I think that's brilliant. One of the, it's interesting, so, so many millennial parents right? They were like, I'm, I'm right on the cusp. Right. I was like a 79. So I, I think I'm technically an expert, but I feel like I crossed both of those boundaries pretty well. Alright. And millennials were so ignored and so expected to be kind of on their own by their exer and Boomer parents. That they're over-involved and overdue for their kids. Right? Everything is about making their kid happy, but in doing so, they forget that how happiness is acquired is by participation. And so all the parents that I like, mostly my friends, my, my, my clients, I can be a little bit more direct about it with, but you can't critique your friends' parenting. It tends to go pretty badly. How dare you? No one wants that I drink, especially being a guy without kids. Yeah. Right. I do parent coaching, but being a guy without kids, no one wants, no one wants my opinion out in the world, which is fine, but by all the studies, the happiest kids are the ones that do chores. Right. And I don't mean like turning'em into Cinderella, right? Like, I don't mean like your kids should be doing everything in the house for you, but they feel like it's their home when they contribute to the home. Right. There's an onus to what they're doing. Yep. Yeah. And, and so what I kind of try to push guys towards is being partnered with their spouse around what keeping the home looks like. Mm-hmm. And then as soon as their kids are able to do something to contribute to that, to set that expectation. Right. This is really interesting, um, that you said that, and, and I'm not, I'm gonna make an assumption that I hope you can correct me on here. Mm-hmm. You said you're a parent coach, but you don't have kids, so you don't want, so people don't want your opinion on, on that. Yeah. It's extremely interesting because you may be working with the parent, but that parent needs to work on themselves. And it sounds so weird every time, right? Because you're like, no, it's for my kids. It's for my kids. Sure it is. But the thing I learned when I started figuring out that, like kind of where I'm screwed up and started to figure those things out, my parenting got better, my marriage got better. Like all these different things got better because I started working on those things because those things. Are the ones that poke at that relationship that we have. That's where before the podcast came on, on board, that's what it was. It was all of a sudden I realized, I'm like, my kid is not, she's not doing things to me. She's a infant, right? Like she's being a kid and she didn't even choose to be here. Like, I, what, what am I expecting from an infant? And as soon as I, I could not tell you when that flipped, but as soon as it did, I'm like, it felt like my brain exploded.'cause I'm like, oh, wow. Like I, if, if I'm getting mad at her for doing something, that's usually me. You working with parents and making them better is helping them. And that question that you're saying, well, tell me how your 10-year-old runs your life. Dude, I, I see it all the time and I'm not, I'm not in the clinical setting. Like I see some parents, I'm like, dude. If you just stop letting that kid run whatever you want them to do, like you could fix that, right? You can bring them into the fold and do this thing. Let them be bored, let them not be happy. Like it's fine. Right? And well, and it's not just fine, it's necessary, it's, and my wife and I, but you have to learn how to be bored in life. I think my wife and I kind of butted heads for a little bit about that early on, and then we had this conversation. I was like, it is not our jobs to make her happy. That's not our job. Our job is to give her the ability to figure out how to make herself happy. That's it. Like, I, I can't make, I mean, you probably know better than anybody. You can't make anybody happy through your practice. There's, there's literally no possible way you can give 'em tools and coach them through it. But it's that whole saying, like, you can lead a horse to water and then if you try to make him drink, you're gonna drown it. Right. And, and that's how we've seen with, with the girls as, as soon as we kind of let off a little bit on that aspect of like, we gotta do these things to make them happy, like look happy that I'm like, oh, that's great. You know what? I can give my five-year-old a box and play with her, with that box and she'll be great happy clan. Right? Because it's, that's not our job. Yeah. It's, it's just been very enlightening to be able to do that and to, to, to tell my wife that like, hey, let's just, let's just work on giving them the tools and the ability to do things that give them confidence, that ultimately give them that happiness they're looking for. That's all. We're, look, that's all we're doing here, right? Yeah. And oh, by the way, we're gonna make good humans.'cause there's plenty of just crappy ones right now. Let's just, let's make 'em, you know, respectful and, and, and with a service mindset, and I think we'll be all right. There's a few factors that really make this hard on folks. Mm. Right. So one, we are more overburdened in nuclear families than we've ever been before. And the things you're talking about, take patience. Oh yeah. And time. And when you're talking about oh two, this couple needs to both be working 40 hour a week jobs. There's nobody else for the kids. Maybe the kids get some daycare, maybe the kids get to school. But we're all just doing the best we can and no one's sleeping. That's hard. It's hard to like sit with a kid as they're dysregulated trying to figure out what to do with themselves instead of just handing them something to do. Right. That's hard. So that's one. Two, that how to provide for your family and how to create the opportunities for them gets tricky because we watch is different. People from different economic levels do that. Right. So if you're super wealthy and you've got an au pair, a nanny, and your vacations are like taken off for three weeks to go be somewhere where the kid can be bored, but also engage in the beach, that's great. Right. But most families have like a four day weekend at the beach with their kids if they're lucky. Lucky if they're very lucky. Right. And all of a sudden they're just trying to squeeze, like, no, I wanna get every drop of memory out of this moment that we can. Right. And that gets hard too. The, what's been a lot of fun is a, a client actually did this. Mm-hmm. And now I've recommended it to every client with money that they can, so everybody with white collar work and in the military, we're, we're away from family. Mm-hmm. Right. Like for white collar jobs, the expectation now is that you move away from home. Okay. So your family might be in Baltimore, but now you're off in la That means that we've lost cousins. Right. Right. We've lost the aunties, we've lost the uncles. Like we've got these nuclear families spread out to the winds. Right. And so one of the best things I've seen people do now is they do a vacation at a beach house, except it's this, or lake house or whatever. It doesn't matter. But it's the same place every year in the summer. Right. And the cousins come for a week. Right, right. And if a family can prioritize that and they do it in the same place, those memories lock in for those kids. Hmm. Interesting. Right. So as kids, we don't remember like, oh, summer of 82, like, that's not what I remember. I remember, oh, when I was young I would play with my cousin. Right, right. And that might be an amalgam of like three different trips, right? Yeah. Yeah. If at the same place. But it works out really well. I think we've, life has gotten so complicated. Doing the simple thing gets really hard, but the simple thing is the biggest requirement of being a parent. That, that's a great point. And, and I want to make sure to be fair too, like it's, it is patience. And as I mentioned earlier, I, we've been blessed and fortunate to be, to have my wife here with the girls at home, so it's mm-hmm. You know, it makes it harder. Yes. It's a, it's a one income household, but. Gosh, dude, it's, it's 100% a patient's game. And just recently my wife took a trip, which she, uh, very rarely does. She took a trip over to see some family, and it was just here, uh, me and the girls. And I was like, day three. I'm like, how do you do this? This is ridiculous. The driving here, the driving there, the dealing with emotions, the, like, all the things, right? And I'm like, dude, it's, this is, this is tough.'cause you know, it's so much easier to go to work. I go to work, I go to an office setting. You're an adult. You're expected to have emotions and control. You're expected to do these things. There's, there's a checklist to do like easy. Well, and there's a clear chain of authority at your job, correct? Yes. So I stayed home. I, you know, I took leave, stayed with the girls. It was great. But it was those moments where I'm like, how does she do this? I got. I don't, I, I couldn't get from there to here on time. And, and I give her sometimes a hard time for that. Like, oh, you're, you're late to this. Oh. And then I'm doing it. I'm like, oh, I, I get it this Now I know why she's late. Yep. This doesn't make any sense. Um, I questioned so many things, dude. When, uh, when when I said, oh, I was like, maybe we shouldn't do this thing and this and this. My wife's like, no, no, you back off, back off. Just go back to work. It's fun. Um, but I definitely questioned a lot of things. Right. Uh, but it has absolutely a patient game because it does take pa way more patience to get my 5-year-old to do her chore, which is pick up her little side of the room. Mm-hmm. She picks things up, makes her bed. The bed is not greatly made, man. It's, you know, it's not, there's no maid in there. We're not, we're, we're not doing hospital corners here. Exactly. Like, but she's making her bed. She puts little toys on there and whatever. She's like, come look at my bed. All right, cool. You did your chore. Got it right. And so, but it, it takes so long. And then it takes longer. I'm doing something over here and she's, she wants me to come see it, and I'm like, no, no, you're good. I trust you. No, no. Come see it. So then I go over there and I think, okay, let's take a minute, come back to my thing.'cause again, as you mentioned, we're always in a hurry. Go in there. And now she's telling me about every single toy that she put on the bed and, and why she put that specific toy in the bed. And so now that, that's where I started really to like, dig deep. I'm like, all right, this is her. This is her time with me right now. Mm-hmm. Like if I blow up or if I walk away or I dismiss, I lost that moment. And, and then she won't want to do that again. But in my, in my in insides, I'm like wanting to crawl out. Like I just need to go do 20,000 things, man. Yeah. But it is a patience game that I think my wife does like a pro, and I am constantly, it's a battle in my head to keep patience for those kind of things that my wife does just so well. So well, so it's, it's interesting the, the frame that's made more and more sense to me as I've talked to more and more parent coaches and dads mm-hmm. And just my patients is the idea of the masculine and the feminine in parenting. Mm-hmm. And what's funny is, I know plenty of people where the masculine role is being hailed by the woman if it's a heterosexual couple, right? Like, this doesn't need to be entirely gendered, but the, the maternal role is nurturing. Mm. Is that patience that that person that will sit there with the kid and be like, no, you're, I'm, I'm in your world right now. What are we doing, kid? Like, I'm here. The masculine role is, how do we get you ready for the world? Yes. Right. So it's that combination of, you know, hey, be safe and hey, show me how high you can climb. Yep. And what's the best parents you see kind of flow between the roles, depending on the task mm-hmm. And the lane that they're in. Yeah. Right. Like a dad might be a lot more, be safe in a relationship where a mom is much more like, how are you navigating your relationships? Right. Yeah. Yeah. And then a mom with sports will be much more likely to be like, Hey, hey, hey. Like, this is a dangerous sport. And that'll be like, yeah. Show me how hard you can hit 'em. Right. And I think the best partnerships, you kind of go back and forth between these things, but the, the beauty of acknowledging that, you know, Hey, your wife has more patients here. Mm-hmm. I imagine there are times where you're more patient teaching your kids than your wife is. I am. Yeah. There is, there's times where she's kind of losing it and I'm like, it's cool. Like, I got it. It's, we're good. Right. Um, and we try to work, I, I think, well, I have to assume that at 22 years we've figured a little bit of that, of that out where I can, she, she's tagging me out without. Physically tagging me out. I'm just, it's okay. It's, this is my cue I gotta go. Right? Mm-hmm. Well, yeah, you've got two decades to know the, the cues, right? You're like, those seals moving in a room that's whoever's leading's leading. It's fine. There's definitely cues, but it's funny you say that the other day, well, my, my youngest just started kindergarten, bro. The first day was like magic. Like she was, oh, I wanna go to school. She got on the bus, I mean, all the things. Second time she went breakdown and just getting her on the bus. And, uh, to your point, we, we swapped roles. We swapped roles right in that moment.'cause it got to the point where I'm like, you know, maybe we should just drive her to school 'cause, but the whole point is to get her on the bus. Normally I would be taking her from my wife and be like, get on the bus, you're going. And this time I was like, ah, maybe we shouldn't. My wife literally grabbed her. She's like, here you go. Nope. And went on and, uh, we walked away from the bus and we saw her in the window and she was no longer crying, but she was like, uh, like mad dogness mad. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Through the window. And she drives by, and I look at my wife, I'm like, thanks for doing that. I, I think I broke, I think I was like, I was just wanting to make it easy. And realistically, to your point, again, had I done that, it would've been harder. It would've been harder to walk her into class. She's seen us in the class. Like, you see what I'm saying? So we've, I've now seen many times where my wife and I kind of swap roles or we, we, we, um, we use waves of it where it's like, all right, I need to be the masculine dude. Right? And, and I do, and I enjoy that. And I, I like that role of mine, but I've also seen the other side, and, and it's, it's very nice to be able to have that give and take. I think that, you know, I was looking at the, the questions and you had written about what fathers need to do for their daughters to be that masculine presence. And I think this leads into that very well because essentially what kids need is to see complete parents. Mm. And for so long we divvied up things so firmly, like, this is what a dad does, this is what a mom does, and this is who you go to each for. Right. And what we showed was an incomplete person. Uh, like I think, and I've talked about this before on the podcast, but I, I think a lot about my grandfather, my father, men and my family really like kids. But my grandfather and father didn't have opportunities to be like parents as much as they would've liked to have. And it robs us of those moments. Right. Like every dad with a daughter wants to be the one who gets to be soft, right? Yeah. Like, like most dads like they, they've got their daughter and they want to like, give her a little bit more than mom does sometimes. Oh, yeah. Right. And I think by accepting that complexity of you and bringing it to your kid and looking at the people that are helping you raise your kid to brace when those moments happen. In this instance it was your wife getting the kid on the bus like, Hey look, I see you. Nope, we're not. Mm-hmm. Puppy doll guys are not gonna work. Right. Get her on the bus. We're not doing this tomorrow. We need people around us to be able to do that. Yeah. Otherwise we fall into that rigidity'cause we're just holding it together. Yep. And, and, and I'll, and I'll throw her some more flowers.'cause she literally walked inside and started crying and that, that's not like Right. Because that's her, that's her baby. That's the last baby we have. And she's told me that many, many times before she went to school. It's like, this is the last one. I'm like, you know, it is. But again, just to show, you know, the strength that she has that we need as a couple to be able to like, all right, no, you go on the bus and then come home and just break down because. Her baby's gone. No, and I really appreciate that answer because it really affirms in a way what we're trying to do with the pod with my podcast, right? Mm-hmm. Which is modeling what we want our daughters to see, and men modeling what we want our daughters to know. Masculinity as, because I can't agree with you any more than this. Like it's caught not taught. People have said that many times. It's what they've seen. There's not, I can tell them tell'em blue in the face, how they should go. Choose another partner, a, a man, and then if I'm doing the complete opposite, it doesn't matter. In fact, it might, it might make it worse. And to know that we're, we're looking at men being present in their lives and then emulating what, what they hope. Is good and, and fair and masculine in another man. But showing that through, not just with them specifically, but through their relationship with their mm-hmm. With their wife. Like I think that's huge. And that's part of that mindfulness that we talked about, right? That's mm-hmm. Mindful about how they're seeing you, what they're seeing you do, and what they're hearing you say. It needs to be congruent, otherwise it is gonna be a problem. Well, it's not just gonna be a problem. It's, it hurts the kids. Children are simple and we as a species make the most fragile children Right. Of almost any species. Like look at almost any other mammal, they come out walking fact. Yep. Right. Ours are just big babbly brains that are still trying to develop. Right. Children need simple answers. And so what I, what I see all the time with adults in practice is every parent's gonna make mistakes. Right. Kids are gonna latch onto something. Yeah. And what happens is, is the minute that a kid doesn't feel like their world is safe, it's usually because their parents, caregivers, or whoever's in charge of them. Mm-hmm. Does something incongruent? Their words don't line up with what they say, their actions don't line up with what the world is doing. And sometimes that can be pretty profoundly clear and sometimes kids just find something. Right? Right. And so what happens then is they need to make a straight line story that makes the world safe for them. Again, they need to make an excuse for the parent either not being the parent they need, need them to be, or they need a reason why parents don't need to be that. And that's all of a sudden when all our little quirks and foibles pop up. That's why some people are perfectionists, right? Hey, if I just do the right things, my parents show up. Mm. That's why we get some people that are fiercely independent. Hey, I shouldn't need anybody. Like, I'm five, I shouldn't eat anybody. I should be able to make my own breakfast. And the tragedy of it is, is no matter how good of a parent you are, people are gonna find their thing. But the worst parent you are, the more things they find. And that's when people really start to struggle is when these stories get layered. And that's what we're talking about. That you like, you show you don't teach. Right. Like you, you be there with them, you do the best you can. Right. But you also, when you fail, when you aren't inc. Congruence with what you wanna be in the world. Mm-hmm. Acknowledge that with your kid, Hey, I wasn't who I wanted to be there. Here's what I'm gonna do to get better. Right. I'm so sorry. Which is something that our parents like, I don't know about yours. My parents never apologized as a child. Right. That was like, that was against their authority. Yeah. That was, that was thought of as destructive to children at the time. And it's important when I say these things that to remind everybody, that doesn't mean our parents were bad. Yeah. Right. It was how it was at that time. Right, right. My dad spanked me. He hated every minute of it. The reason he spanked me was because for his generation, if you didn't spank your kid, you didn't love them. Right. It means you didn't have boundaries. Right. So these ideas that we have around accountability, I think where parents don't, where we just didn't dial it in right. For a little while is parents had no accountability when we were kids. Right. And then for a little while, children had no accountability. Like it was all parents like knocking everything down, making it all about like, Hey, I'm gonna provide you everything. You don't have to worry about anything. I got you. Oh, I'm so sorry I didn't get you here. That's my fault. Yeah. Where now hopefully we're getting more into the like just being accountable to each other. Yep. Your kid needs to make her bed. You need to, when you have the space to go and like celebrate that with her and sometimes you're not gonna be able to and she still needs to be able to do the thing. Right. And that's okay too. And, and one thing I've learned with that specific thing is when they don't do it mm-hmm. We take it as the, the playbook that we've been given, at least I'll say Oscar's playbook, right? Mm-hmm. It's a disrespect. And that's when we start getting into the emotional control issue, the yelling, the screaming, what, what have you. And it's been a extreme change for me to, to say they didn't do it because they're trying to disrespect me. They just didn't do it. Mm-hmm. Right. And it, trust me, this is literally a, a daily battle in my own head. Right. I would imagine. But, but to, it's so, it feels really good when I don't get upset and I just say, Hey, listen, you had a chore. You know that everything in life has a consequence. There's a good consequence for good things. There's a bad consequence for bad things. Everything has a consequence. You didn't do your. You have five minutes to get your short done. If you don't want to, that's fine. You're gonna end up doing it anyway. But there's a consequence attached to it. So either way you're gonna do it. Just understand that there's a consequence attached to it. Mm-hmm. Right? And that could be anything from when my 13-year-old is real easy, like that phone will go away. I don't, I don't need you to have that phone. So easy peasy. Right. And that's, that's a big no-no. That's her, that's her connection to the world. Uh, but just little things like that. Right. And, and it's crazy when I can not get upset and just almost have it be a matter of fact. Mm-hmm. Like, uh, you didn't do your stuff. Here's a consequence. Go ahead and do it now.'cause now you, you still have to do it, but there's a consequence and it goes so much better. Right. Because my daughter still doesn't like it. Well, that's a key point, right. I think the hardest thing is it can't be about punishment. Right. Because punishment is about the person who's been hurt's, anger being resolved. Right. Not about the action and the consequence. And so you don't, what what's interesting is it's easier if you don't get upset, but it doesn't mean that you can't get upset. Right. It just has to be the, the consequence has to be consistent regardless of whether you're upset or not. Yeah. And, and I think that's where a lot of guys get stuck. They wanna be like that stoic parent mm-hmm. Where like, hey, like this is just the way of the world. I'm teaching you the way of the world. This is the consequence. Right. It's okay for you to get a little pissed at her for not doing it. Yeah. Just as long as that's not the reason why the consequence is occurring. Right. And you can even tell her, you know this, like, I'm really upset that you didn't get this done right now. Yep. Like, and I'm, I'm holding that and that's not gonna change the consequence. Like, like, you know, you didn't do this. You don't do it in the next five minutes, you lose your phone. Right. This isn't 'cause I'm angry, but I am like, you feel that, you know, I'm upset at you right now'cause I know you can do better. Right. There's a difference between saying, you made me upset and I'm upset. Mm-hmm. Yep. A hundred percent. Right. It upsets me when, right. Yeah. And, and that's something that I've shifted in the last few years where it's like, I'm upset. I'm letting you know that, but it's not you. Right. Because one thing I try to teach the girls is you're in charge of your emotions bottom line. Mm-hmm. That they're yours. If you give 'em to someone that you lost that. Right? Yeah. But what hypocrisy would it be if I'm like, you made me upset, like, because of you. Like, you know, it's, and, and I, I'm very clear. I'm upset right now. I don't want to talk to you. Go over there and finish your chore, whatever. But I've really shifted to not saying you did this to me, and that's an important distinction. I, I think the, the trick there though is. You can acknowledge that what they've done has upset you. Right. Right. And you can say, I'm upset because this happened and I know you can do better. The trick with it is on the other end of it is the repair. Right. Hey, you did it. I'm, I'm really glad you did. It's making it a lot easier for me to like, be, not be upset about this anymore. Thank you. I'm glad we're here again. And, and so I think where we kind of, it's hard to dial in man, because we as guys don't have models for this. We really don't. But the, the way that it's supposed to work is that you are responsible for what you do with your emotions. Right. Right. Like how they drive you, the actions you take that's on you. The emotions you have are absolutely influenced by the people around you. Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And that's why it's so important to choose who you spend your time around. Yeah. To understand what, what you're responding with based on who's around and not handing children responsibility to manage your emotions. Yeah. But part of how we teach kids about this is that it's okay to be upset. It's okay to be upset at someone for something, and then how to resolve it. What's to do with that? Being upset. Hey, speak a boundary, right? If you're upset, it's because somebody crossed a boundary. Speak your boundary and keep the people around you that'll respect and repair those boundaries with you. Yeah, absolutely. And it's tricky 'cause for guys like us, particularly military guys, right? Like we want the stoicism. Yep. Right. We want the bearing. I always like how the, how the military frame frames it. Right. Bearing right. You can feel whatever you want, but this is what you look like. Right. This is what you do. Absolutely. And bearing's important in a combat situation. Yep. It is not what kids need. Right. Kids need expressed emotion with appropriate action'cause they need to see it. That's so true. And, and it brings me to that question I wanted to ask. It's talking about that whole be a man thing, right? Like mm-hmm. We've heard this all our lives. It, I, I think I. I'm an advocate for the fact that it means, doesn't mean the exact same thing it meant back then, but it still means something, right? Yeah, absolutely. So when we're looking at that question is, is how do you define current healthy masculinity today? Right. And what are those misconceptions that's might hold about what it means to quote unquote be a man, especially, especially in front of their daughters. So I think it's to acknowledge the human underneath the man. I think for so long we looked at men like you had to be John Wayne Clarice would, right? That's a man. Yeah. That's what a man does. And that's all. A man is, uh, colleague of mine framed it best. And I, I quote him almost every time this comes up, our job as clinicians is to teach guys that they don't have to hold it together all the time. Mm-hmm. But they have to hold it together most of the time. Okay. And that's what kids need to see. That's what girls need to see from their fathers. They need to see, like when the chips are down, dad's there and dad's gonna take the hit. And they need to see what happens when dad's out of his armor. Hmm. And so, however masculinity lives in you express it. Find ways that your masculinity comes out in those like really important ways. Like you and I probably share a little bit of that protector role. Mm-hmm. Like a man is the guy who's protecting the home. And it feels good to be the guy that like, if something goes down, you take the hit. And so that's important to me. Not every guy, it is. Some guys that's not right where they live. Like if you're a, if you're an accountant married to a female police officer, that's probably not how that's going down in your house. Right? Right. Absolutely. But maybe it's the risk taking, maybe like you're the accountant, but you get onto the weekends and you go paragliding or whatever the hell. Right, right. And you're the one that's teaching kids like, all right, let's go have some fun. Let's put on the helmet and then let's go nuts. Right. Let's go hit it hard. Maybe it's, you're the guy in the relationship and you're the one that's more sexual than your partner. Right. Kids can see that in appropriate ways. There's nothing wrong with a kid seeing that a parent wants the other parent in an appropriate, romantic, connected way. There's nothing wrong with a kid seeing like, oh, the, the man's being the pursuer for these things. A little bit. That's healthy because they're gonna model in their future relationships off of that. And maybe like one of your kids is gonna be the pursuer, right? Maybe that's, that's a little bit more their flare or whatever, but they're gonna learn how to do it from you. Yeah. Both the giving and the receiving makes sense. And then the last kind of trait that we know that's just across cultures is status driven. Right? Men tend to be status driven. Mm-hmm. So for you, right, you're status driven. You're the guy that kept his career, your wife stayed at home. They need to be able to see that in you. They need to see like when you get pinned on, when you get the medal, right? When you get those professional achievements and why dad wasn't home, they need to see the community rally around that. Right? But let's say that you're not status driven. That's okay. As long as one of you is Right. Right. As long as they're seeing some kind of connection. So the way to be a man in a household, unfortunately, is complex. An individual. Yeah. Like we have ways society sees these things, and that's important. We're cultural is important. We go crazy by culture. Yeah. Right. So be who you are, lean into the masculinity that you bring, and then do it in healthy, connected, and expressive ways. Mm-hmm. Let them see it and let them see it be effective and appropriate. And when it's not one that you have, but you're like, men do this, but this isn't, this isn't what dad does. Right. That's okay. As long as you point it out a little bit. Like, Hey, that's how that dad does it. It's okay that he does it that way. Yeah. But you know, here, like I'm, I don't know how to shoot. Your mom goes to the range every day. Who's taking it on the home? Intruder, like, I don't know. It's not me, kid. Right. I got you at the door, mom. Mom's got the gun. It's fine. Right? Yeah. No, and, and to, to take that role, as you said, like take it as yours. There's a skit I think, or a, I don't know what they call it, the comedians, but, uh, this bit that Chris Rock had mentioned that really just stuck with me for a long time. And for a long time I didn't really feel, I, I didn't really know how to feel about it. Mm-hmm. Other than it felt just very true. And, and the bit says that women, children, and dogs are the only ones that get unconditional love. Mm-hmm. Man has to prove that he deserves that. And for, and I'm paraphrasing so I'm sure it's much better said for the. So, yeah, he, he's a professional speaker. It's probably, yeah, he's a good, for a while I was like, that's so true. Like I've, I've probably grown up that way. Like, I've seen this, like where I need to provide value. I need to do something in order to prove my worth, if you will. At first I think it was like, ah, that's kind of bs. Like, that sucks. And then other times I'm like, ah, that's kind of true. I've gotten to the point, maybe called my old age, maybe, I don't know. I, I don't know what it is. It's definitely a sense of service for me, right? Mm-hmm. And sure I serve in the military, and I can tell you right now, I didn't join right away for service. I was like, oh, there's school and there's other stuff, and, you know, whatever. But 18 years later, it's important to Right. Exactly. Uh, but yeah, service is important and, and you know, as a, as a Christian man, I know that I need to be here to serve and do these things. I'm almost okay with that comment that Chris Rock says. In a mm-hmm. To say I think it's true. Yeah. It's largely true. Yeah. I need to provide value, uh, to my daughters. I need to provide value to my wife and to my household, and then I need to provide value to the world. Like, what am I doing here if I don't provide some type of value? I think where, so my colleagues would disagree with this, right? Um, most therapists push towards this idea that we're all lovable unconditionally. Mm-hmm. And I, I disagree almost entirely. I think the only people that should be expected to give unconditional love are parents to children. Mm-hmm. And that is foundational. Kids need to have somebody, of course, that they know that no matter what they do, no matter where life goes, that they are loved and cherished by somebody. Mm-hmm. And the most pain points I see is when parents don't express that to kids. Mm-hmm. Like you can be, you can make all the mistakes you want as a parent, as long as your kid knows that you love them no matter what. That person's got something to build on. That's a pillar of their life. Right. Outside of that relationship though. No, absolutely not. I think the key to a strong personality, somebody who's gonna feel secure in the world and someone who's gonna feel lovable in the world, is by knowing that you're capable of doing the things that you wanna be of service for. It's, and that at some point, if this, if your way to serve changes, you'll find a new way. So a lot of guys I see, like we, we talk about veteran suicide, right? Mm-hmm. How we have a really high rate. What isn't really talked about very often is that a significant portion of those suicides are vets over 75. Oh wow. And it's because we are much less likely to take being disabled. Well, right. Yeah. And we have higher rates of Parkinson's. We have higher rates of ms. We tend to get disabled, right? From all the stress and all the different things that we go through as veterans. Even just a five year service member, right. Much less somebody who's done 20. The trick there is these guys don't know how to make the turn to be of service in a different way. Mm-hmm. And that's when moving from labor to wisdom can come in. Right. We used to have a lot of traditions around like what it meant to be elderly in a community and how to be useful as an elderly person. There is a beauty in accepting that man manhood is earned and can be lost. As long as you have the confidence to know that you're capable of earning it and you generally are right, it doesn't mean that you've gotta be a perfect man. It doesn't mean you have to be ser of service all the time, 24 7. It means that you are building a life in which the way you serve matters and touches the people and things that are important to you. So that way on the times when you screw it up, your whole personhood isn't on. That's a great point. And it. Really brings, brings to light that yes, we do, we should be capable. That's, that's such a, I, I've always loved that word is capable. Right? That's, that's what I hope to do for my daughters. Right? Make them capable mm-hmm. To do the things that they need to do. But then also here's hoping that, that what we're doing, the service that I'm providing, hopefully through the podcast, is also making other men capable. Because I can tell you right now, uh, some of the information, and not just for my podcast, but just in the, in the realm that I'm in now, right. As a, as a father and, and putting information out in the world, I could have definitely used that, you know, in 2012, oh man. When my daughter was coming in. Like, and to be fair, I wasn't searching for it. I just figured I figured it out, right? Yeah. I'm a pretty competent guy. Yeah, absolutely. Uh, but no, it mean it would've been, it would, it may have been a game changer, maybe not. But to have the option there would've been really good. And, and to just make myself more capable of being a father would've been mm-hmm. Ideal. Really, I, this has come up a few times too, but I love what changes at 40 for most people. Right. And it certainly was been true for me, where the goal has no longer to not make mistakes. It's to make new ones. Yeah, absolutely. Right? Yes. So if you had some of this in 2012, yeah, man, you'd have made a whole different set of mistakes. It'd been great. That's true. And, and I'm, I've become very, very comfortable with, uh, confrontation and mistakes. That's something that, it's just, it's fine. Um, my daughters and I talk about mistakes on a daily basis. Hey, how did you fail today? Where did you struggle today? And then if they say nowhere, I'm like, all right, we'll find something today. Right. Because it, it builds character, it builds capability and it builds confidence. Well, those, I was just then like, what were, what'd you miss kid? Yeah. Right. Where did you, you know, yeah. Where were you Miss something there like, great, let's celebrate those victories and like, right. Let's, let's look at the world a little bit. Well, I, I don't do it to my 5-year-old too much yet. Right.'cause she's no doing thing. She's fine. But my oldest, I'm like, so did you try anything today? When she says nothing, I'm like, did you try anything new today? No, I didn't. Like, all right, well that's your goal for tomorrow. Like, you gotta try something. Like, it doesn't matter if you fail at it or whatever, you'll be fine. You know, the way that I, another dad put it that I really liked is like, oh, so today was a consolidation day, right? Solid. Solid. You felt good in what? You know how to do. Good. So that means tomorrow, right? You'll be ready to do the next thing, right? Or if, uh, like if, depending on how much they're tracking it, it's mostly for athletics. I see it come up really well. Right. Where like they go to a practice. They didn't learn a new thing and they're like, oh, but last week you were really struggling with that and you got it. That's awesome. Let's celebrate that. Right? Yeah. That's good. Cools. All right. Now let's, what's the, now that you got that, what's the right, what's the next bit? And I, and that's, that's where I think some fathers may think of sports as like, well, they're not that good, so we won't continue. But I think that's where we get a lot of that. Maybe you don't, they don't pay attention too much during the day, but if your, if your kid is doing some physical activity, they're gonna fail at some point and you get an opportunity to do something better. Well, and we do it, we do children's sports so badly. Yeah. It's, I I just had an interview with a student of mine who's now, he's a former D two athlete that's a child social worker. Like he's, he's a unicorn. Interesting. And he's a, and he's a huge black guy. So like out here in Denver, man, like there's one of him as far as I can tell. That's interesting. But what we were talking about with ath athletics is everybody treats childhood athletics like every kid's, Tom Brady. Hmm. Tom Brady's had a pre, Tom Brady's had a pretty miserable life. Yeah. Like, don't get me wrong, it was worth it for him. He made his achievements. And I think we can learn a lot from watching exceptional people do exceptional things. I don't wanna degrade that. I'm not trashing him for the life he's chosen. Yeah. Most of us can't choose that life and won't. Right. And that's fine too. Sports, when we were kids, you played everything. Yep. Now, if your kid's into soccer, there's, they're expected to play soccer all year round. And what we're seeing is we're seeing sport burnout early. We're seeing repetitive injuries happen in high school instead of college. Right. And we're losing the joy of sport. What kid, like only 2% of people who play sports, end up going some kind of professional. For the rest of us, it was a way to learn how to be on a team, how to fail and get better and how to be in our body. Yep. That's enough. That's enough to want to be in a beer league later for softball when you're in your forties. Right? Reliving the old, that's a old glory days. Or finding new ways to fail forward. Like, you know, oh, I gotta hit the ball harder 'cause I ain't running as fast. Let's go new, uh, problem solutions. That's good. No, you're you're absolutely right. And, and I think I even had that mindset where it's like, well if we put 'em in sport, are they really that good? And it's at this point it's like, no, no, let's, let's put you in something. In fact, they all have to do something. It it, I'm like, I don't care what you, you want to choose volleyball? Go play volleyball. I don't care. The trick here is once you choose it,'cause you have to choose something, you finish that season, you're gonna go the entire ti. You're not gonna quit in the middle. It's gonna get hard. Like you're gonna finish it. If you truly didn't like it at the end of the season, we'll pick another. That's fine. But now I want to like make that transition a little bit and get to that personal questions for you. Okay. If you're feeling ready for it, let's do it. So I think these are important because we talked a little bit about how the uniqueness of masculinity is where we find power in our expression of it. And as fathers, it's important for you to understand yours a little bit better. And I think these stories that we're getting from guys are gonna help guys figure out the different ways that their masculinity is in their life and how they can bring it forward. So I've, I've really enjoyed getting these answers. So the first question's gonna be, what is a rule about masculinity that you learned before you were 12 that remains true today? I think it's literally be a man. I, I don't, I, I mean, I was, I, I was raised in a Spanish household. Um, some pretty clear directives on what that means. Very, uh, you know, you're gonna work and if you work, you, you always provide to the house. Like this was, I started working probably around 12. I just, you know, odd jobs, picking weeds. Uh, I did chicken pens for a while and our coop chicken coop, I think is what they call. So that provider role within your family was really important. Absolutely. And you know, my father, um, we, when we came here, he, he, man, he's been working his butt off forever and ever, but, um, he just made it very clear like, we're the providers. I'm the oldest. So he, he would have Oh yeah. You were host. Yeah. He would have the conversation with me. He say, Hey, uh, if and when I go, like, you're, you're providing here. Right? And obviously now I have a family. It's slightly different. But when I was in, in our home, that's, that's what it was. So. Mm-hmm. And it was, you know, I'd come home and I'd be super frustrated from whatever work I was doing.'cause like I said, it was normally manual labor of some sort. Well, that's what kids can do. Yeah. And then he'd be like, yeah, don't complain. There's no complaining here. I'm like, alright. So, and that's again, if I had to say anything, it'd be like, just be a man. This is what, this is what it is. This is what you're doing. Probably before I was 12 for sure. So that, I think it's always interesting finding that balance of the provider role. Hmm. Right. Be because we, we tend to trash on it because it cost us so much to do just that. But it's also important for a lot of guys, they won't feel like a man unless they're doing the providing and they need to figure out a way to do that. I think where we can learn how to do it a little bit better than our father's did is it's okay that it's hard, it's okay that it's seen to be hard and it's good to endure that, but it needs to be witnessed. I, I think where our dads got really beaten up as the expectation was as you suffered in silence. Yep. It was just expected and there was no thank you. And I think that's the miss, right? Yeah. Be a provider If, if being a provider is important to your masculinity, absolutely. Do that. Yeah. And do it with a smile on your face. Right. You're achieving something and doing it right. But it's also okay to say like, my hands hurt that to suck today, and I'm doing it anyway. Yeah. I think that's the, for me anyway, when I hear, 'cause my dad was very similar and so was my grandfather. Mm-hmm. Like, you just, you put your head down and you work. Right. And I, I think that's important to do. I think so too. Right. But it's also okay for you to accept the care of the people in your life for it. Right. It's also okay for you to like say that, Hey, I know I'm, I'm, I'm hurting right now. And I know that I'm not as present as I wanna be for you. I, but I had to do that. To do this Right. And let the kids see it. Right. Right. And let them feel that sacrifice that you've made for them. And I think probably a little bit of that too is, is. I don't want to say redefining, but maybe defining what providing is. Mm-hmm. Right. Because yes, absolutely. I want to provide for my family. If it's money, food, and home, absolutely I do. But if I, if I couldn't do that, let's just say, you know, I was handicapped and, or, or just couldn't, something happened, it couldn't work. Right. Then what does providing mean then? And, and I, I'm not gonna sit here and tell you what that means.'cause it, it can mean something different for everybody else. But, but for me, if I had to just think right now, if, if I could not do what I do, then I would say providing is doing the things I do with my daughters outside of work that's providing, I'm providing them a value of something from their father. Um, whether it's here in the home, whether it's in their activities that they do, figuring out what that is. Right. Am I still providing? Absolutely. Like I will figure out how to provide something. And again, I, it's easier said than done because. Just to, to what you just said, my providing mindset came from you will go out, you will work hard, put your head down, will not complain, and bring home the bacon because that's what you're supposed to do. And although I still firmly believe that I need to do that, I also know that at some point, and maybe because of our profession, um mm-hmm. Or, you know, my current profession, or it becomes too real where it's like, I may not be here or I could get injured or, you know what I mean? Mm-hmm. So it is really thinking for us dudes like, what does providing mean? Does it have to mean just the one thing?'cause that's where people get into trouble.'cause now you can't do that one thing and everything's, and you're used, it's really brittle. Right? Yeah. Um, and so providing, what does that really mean? What, what are your, what does your family need for you at that very moment that's providing the provider role is ensuring that your family has food, shelter, insecurity. Whatever that looks like. And for most of us it's gonna be, I go to work, I get the health insurance, I get the money, right? I bring it home. Then we get the things we need. But that fundamentally shifts depending on what's going on in someone's life, right? Mm-hmm. So I'm, I've, I've worked with disabled vets who are a hundred percent disability providing still important to 'em. Mm-hmm. But part of how they get that then is I navigate the systems to make sure that we have what we need, I make sure we live within our means. Right. You know, I manage things so that we have what we need, even though my labor isn't necessarily getting it anymore. Mm-hmm. My sacrifice has made it so that we've gotten it, uh, for guys that work, dangerous work, being a provider in part is having life insurance. Right. That's true. That makes sure like, Hey, if I'm gone and my wife has to hold all this down without me, she won't need to worry about money. Right. And I know that's handled, so like. And then I convinced him to do the same thing for her.'cause I'm like, oh yeah.'cause that go great for you if it was just you. Right. Right. Maybe you're gonna have to step back from making the money. Right. Uh, none of 'em like that idea, but it's a thing. Right. Yeah. So I, I love that. I love the, the validation and the beauty of what your father gave you on the strength and tenas it takes to be a provider. But I love how it's being tempered over time with, I don't wanna be as brittle as that. I want to be in, I wanna be in the role for as long as my life will let me. Mm-hmm. In all the different ways it can exist. I think that's beautiful. Yeah. That's the goal. Well, so this one's a little bit, uh, you know, talking about failing forward. Right? Okay. Tell us about a time pursuing your masculinity hurt you. Oh, brother. So many. I was in training. Uh, this is just the easiest example. I'm sure there was prior, prior to that. I mean, if you think about us being boys growing up, and I mean, that's you're full masculinity and you're like, oh yeah, if you can do that, I can do this. And it is. Beyond that. Um, this is a very good example for me. Uh, I injured my back, uh, and chose to because of the environment I was in. Not, I shouldn't say that the environment I was in absolutely had a say in what, what I chose, but it was ultimately my choice. Uh, I chose to essentially get a bandaid fixed so that I can continue doing the thing I was doing. Mm. And I can easily say now may not been the best idea, right? Mm-hmm. Um, now after having spinal fusion and having all these different things done because of that, I don't regret doing all that. I, I, I am very cautious at regret and there, there is regret, I'm sure in everybody's life, but I try to look at if I had done it different or, or what have you, and kind of play it out. But to answer the question that was probably overly masculine answer to something that probably shouldn't have, shouldn't have happened. Well, I think that's what we love about sport and the military, is that there's a willingness to sacrifice yourself for a mission. Yep. And that is important. It is necessary, and it is a valid way to be. I think the problem becomes, it's particularly for young guys. Mm-hmm. And I was certainly guilty of this. Sounds like you were too of, we didn't track whether the juice was worth the squeeze. Yeah. Yeah. This wasn't a state championship where we're blowing out a knee for it. Right. This was, I kept lifting when I shouldn't. Yeah. Right. Yep. This was, I didn't do my PT like I was supposed to because a man's supposed to just push through. Right. And I think that's. That's the problem is that when young guys see it, they see it in moments of greatness. Right? They see that athlete on the field that's a professional athlete pushing through for that last thing to get their team to whatever. Yeah. When you're in the military, the assumption is, is everybody's gonna act like the combat veterans that are deployed instead of the guy that's a rear echelon guy in Denver. Right. We don't have to do what they need to do in the field. In fact, it's destructive for us to do what they do in the field. Right. And yeah, man, I was just as guilty of that. My, my shoulder got wrecked at 19 or 20 because I didn't think anything of it. Right. It hurt. Okay. I guess we just keep doing it. Right? Yeah. Now I'm gotta do all the rubber bands stupid. You know what I mean? Yeah. It's just, if I'd have just done a little bit of that earlier, I wouldn't be doing it every day now. It would've. It would've been gone. So last one, we know, I always like to go out on the high note for this. Tell us about a time where pursuing masculinity empowered you. Marrying my wife. Well, even just, it wasn't the marriage point, it was. Uh, I was leaving the, I was walking back into my house and that masculine side of me was like, no, you gotta, you gotta ask her out. You gotta do the thing that the man, that the man does, that the boy does. Because I was literally about to open my door and walk inside and not do that. And I think that would've been a grave mistake. And so my wife and I have been married for just about 22 years, and it's been an, an incredibly crazy ride. And just, I, I wouldn't change it for the world. So I'd have to say that the old like mindset of the man opens the door and the man does this, and the man, I, I, that was me and I am 100% grateful for it. Uh, yeah. I think it's one of those moments in time where people are getting better about that too. I feel like no one's upset at a guy stepping into traditional things for people that want them. Right. And you and your wife pair very well. She's a military wife, you're a military guy. There's a lot of traditional roles that are happening between you two. But it also sounds like they're, over the years, they've been negotiated well, they've been appreciated Well, on either end of it, and that you two have found the balance within each other. And you wouldn't have had that if you weren't the guy that was gonna ask her out. Yeah. And I, I, her and I have talked about, not necessarily the word masculinity, but my role in her role. We've talked about these things and Yeah, absolutely. I'm the dude that locks the doors. I'm the dude that will clear the house if I hear something at night and she knows that she'll stay over here and she'll grab the kids and she'll g like, that's, again, I'm not putting her in that rule. That's just where we've fallen. And I, that's where you comfortable. And I believe that she appreciates that from me, so. Well, it sounds like you all talk about it. Like I, I think the, that's the beautiful thing about healthy long running marriages. Yeah. It's that occasionally you check in on things. Yep. Do you still like this? Like, I, this is something I do. Is it appreciated? I need to feel appreciated for,'cause it's causing me something. I'm up at two in the morning clearing the house Real quick. Sideline on that. It's, it's really interesting. One of the things that young parents complain about each other is, women with babies will wake up to any sound the baby makes. Yeah. Yeah. I've heard of this. And be furious because the guy doesn't wake up. Right. Right. And they're like, how can you sleep through that? However, it's part of, it's evolutionary if there's any sound outside of the baby men with babies in the house. Yep. Or absolutely like something at the window. What happened? Yep. What? Okay. All right. Yeah. Nothing's at the window. And unfortunately, the first is much more valid for the current world we live in. Right. We've built a very safe world. Our skillset to wake up at a noise is not, it's not as useful. That's true. That's absolutely true. And so the ladies got the shorter to the stick there, but you know. It's a thing. Well, and I think we also, I, I, I'm a hundred percent on that.'cause if there I can, I'll wake up if there's a massive storm and then my wife can just sleep right through it. But I, I've learned maybe my brain synapsis, what have you, there's times, there's a lot of times where I will hear my daughters at night, my, my little one. Mm-hmm. And I'm like, I think she's gonna throw up. And I'm like, I'll go over there because I heard something. Right. You get that parent, like, you don't need to know why, you know what Yeah, exactly. I, I think so, and, and don't get me wrong, I sleep through a lot of the girl's stuff.'cause my wife's like, you didn't know that she came through our bedroom. I'm like, no. I had no clue. But for the most part, I, I've started to, to do that because I think, yeah, we've created a safe environment. I know that we live in a relatively safe neighborhood. It still doesn't take away from the fact that if I hear something at two in the morning. You're the guy that's up. I'm up and I'm, I'm checking. And your wife is comforted by that. She sleeps right through it. Absolutely. And that's the way it's supposed to be. Yeah. I, I think that's, this is the dream of feminism is that we get to choose, which means we can choose traditional and as long as it's choice and everybody's on board and appreciative of what's happening, it's a beautiful thing. Right. I think we just, we had too many people for too long that it wasn't a choice for anybody. Right? Like that guy that had a sheriff wife wanted to be the one getting up and doing the clearing the house. I'm like, that's a bad idea. She should be the one clearing the house. She's got the training man. Well, a lot of that is our ego, right? So. Oh, never. Yeah, that's what I tell people here. I'm like, dude, I'm in a house full of women. I, I've lost my ego. It's, it's gone. I just gotta figure out where I fit in and where I can help. Yeah, I mean, that's why you're, you're making a podcast about telling guys how to be better dads and you know, you're seeing here NC there's no ego there at all. Not at all. What are we, what are we talking about, man? I'm asking for help, bro. That's all I'm doing. Say amen. I'm here for it. Yep. Well, man, I, I've really enjoyed this. I think, uh, I know my eye listeners are gonna be pretty happy with it, and you bringing your expertise as a dad. Hopefully yours are gonna enjoy this as well. Man, this has been, this has been really fun for you. Yeah, this has been great. I think, uh, you know, your experience in literally in the field of masculinity and how this, how this affects us as, as men is, is just key, right? Because the biggest thing that I can bring to anybody on the podcast or give anybody by coming onto a podcast is perspective, right? Mm-hmm. I can't give you all the perspective. I can give you my perspective. And if I have you on the podcast, odds are I can pick up something from your perspective. And really that's what we're looking for is, is those perspectives to give us something to think about, to give us something to strive for, maybe to give us something to avoid. Like, yeah, it's, I think the, the best part about doing the podcast is, is I, you know, I very clearly value like education. I'm a professor, right? Yeah. All these things. But I've learned so much from just being with guys on the ground. Yeah. In like, not a clinical way, in a clinical way. They're coming to me as an expert. Of course, I'm, I'm filtering whatever, but these conversations is, I think that's the beauty of the space we're in is that all of a sudden if we bring both of these things together, we learn new things. Absolutely. And it's been absolutely wonderful. Yes, sir. Same here. Thank you so much for having me on here. It was awesome. Thank you. At the beginning of the episode, I asked you to pay attention to ways that you might change how you parent or hope that other men might change how they parent. If you can take a moment and leave a comment on what you might do. It's really gonna help normalize some of these things for other guys and really help us understand where we can be going towards our parenting and becoming better men. As always, we like to do a fact check here, so we didn't really get too much wrong. I overstated two things or kind of misspoke a little bit. So I talked about veteran suicide and how one in three veteran suicides are from guys over 65, or veterans over 65, not the general population, as in. One third of all suicides are veterans over 65. That's not true. That's not what I meant. I just wanted to make sure that that was clear. Also, I got really voracious and declarative about how miserable housewives were in the fifties. There's a lot of writings and data on how unsatisfactory that life was for many of the people in it. But saying that the vast majority of 'em were miserable is overstated. We don't have good data to, to determine that, and everybody's experience is a little different. We can say that being solely responsible for everything within a household is incredibly difficult, and a lot of people have struggles with it. If you found this useful at all, please do me a favor and rate, like, subscribe, share whatever makes sense on the platform you're on. We really wanna help get this information to as many people as possible and that would really help us do that. As always, thank you so much for joining us and listening. Look for more information about parents, um, from the Daughter podcast with Oscar. We're really lucky to have him in the field and we'll see you next time when we talk about men and family court. We'll see you there.