Healthy Masculinity in a Polarized World: What Are We Teaching Our Sons? | Shaun Dawson

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In this powerful episode of The Gentle Year, Knikki Hernandez interviews Sean Dawson, host of the Raising Men podcast, for an honest and nuanced conversation about raising boys, modern masculinity, and fatherhood in today’s culture.

What does healthy masculinity actually look like? How do we raise emotionally strong boys without suppressing their nature? And is “boys will be boys” harmless — or harmful?

This episode explores the modern masculinity crisis, toxic masculinity vs. healthy masculinity, emotional intelligence in boys, fatherhood challenges, gender roles, feminism, male identity development, and parenting in a polarized world. Sean shares vulnerable stories about apologizing to his children, navigating school discipline issues, teaching boundaries, and redefining what it means to be a protector and provider.

Together, they discuss:

• Raising confident boys in modern society
• Emotional regulation and vulnerability in boys
• Fatherhood and male role models
• Gender equality and masculinity
• Parenting advice for sons
• How to model strength without brittleness
• Self-esteem and identity formation in children

If you’re a parent raising boys, a father questioning your role, or someone interested in male development, parenting strategies, and emotional intelligence, this episode offers grounded insight, practical wisdom, and a hopeful vision for raising the next generation of strong, stable men.

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Transcript

[ 00:00:00,000 ]Thank you. Hey everyone, it's Nikki Hernandez here with Sean Dawson. You are listening to The Gentle Year and I am so excited to have a fellow podcaster and an entrepreneur come to speak to us today about... raising boys, raising men, and masculinity. This is going to be a riveting conversation. But Sean, I want to pass you the mic. Can you please introduce yourself to our audience? Please Nikki, thank you so much. I am so thrilled to be here. Thank you very much for inviting me on. And yeah, as you said, I'm an entrepreneur and I kind of found... myself in a kind of career inflection point. And while, when I when I got into that place, I sort of decided that that I wanted to see what I could do about the masculinity crisis.

[ 00:00:46,540 ]And so I founded a podcast called Raising Men. And that's how we ended up here today. Well, I have to know what prompted you? What was the catalyst to wanting to talk about this masculinity crisis? Yeah, I love that question. And it started when, you know, I would look at my son and... So I've got a seven-year-old boy and a three-year-old girl. And when I look at my daughter, I'm just not worried about how the culture is going to accept her. She's going to get to preschool next year, and she's going to crush it. They're just absolutely going to love her. My son. He had a tough time. And, you know, he went to preschool and he was in the principal's office every week. And. I mean, he's a great kid.

[ 00:01:31,770 ]He's energetic. He's smart. He bores easily. He's loud. He's huge. He's very big. My wife and I are large people. I'm 6 '5". And, um, And so... Um, He just, you know, it was like our society was trying to beat his nature out of him. And. You know, it's my job to make sure that he has the skills. to thrive in the world that he graduates into. I realized that... that his world is going to be so... Alien. To me, it was going to be so different than the world that I grew up in that it might as well be a foreign country. And. That started to worry me. And so I wanted to make a study of it. And for some reason.

[ 00:02:23,650 ]I decided to do it in public and I'm glad I did it because it has afforded me the luxury of meeting some of the most thoughtful people in the space and people who really think deeply and who really. who really just care about... About men and boys, in a way that that people just don't in general— it's like it's like masculinity in our culture has been either vilified or valorized in this ugly way. Right, you know, it's either vilified in the sense that masculinity is bad and it's evil and it should be suppressed, or people take that. And pervert it, and take all the things that are associated with masculinity but are bad. And valorize that.

[ 00:03:13,670 ]And you know, so masculinity is about being tough and being kind of a jerk and and all these things to them and and it's not that's just being an asshole. And. There's nothing less masculine than being an asshole, in my view. I appreciate that sentiment. And if this were a video podcast, people could see me smiling, but it's an audio podcast. So I agree with you. So you said that you are concerned that your son is growing up in a world that's alien to you. That's totally foreign to you in the way that you were raised. What did you mean by that? Yeah, you know, um... You know, manhood was simple. When I was young. Um, You were tough. You didn't show emotion, except for anger. You were allowed to show anger.

[ 00:03:57,130 ]And, you know, you rub dirt in it and you get back in the playing field. And. you know that's it. Was really the way that our society's idea of masculinity was really indexed towards. Um, uh, towards strength, what, you know, kind of even not even strength, but a facsimile of strength. Right. Um, um, it was like the metaphor that I like to use there is, you know, Imagine that. Being a man or being masculine, it means you're building a castle. And the thing that was important about a castle when I was young was how impenetrable it is, how thick the walls are, how tall the walls are, and all of that stuff. And so, you know, you build this castle, but how are you going to, if you're going to build a castle, how would you build it such that it was impenetrable?

[ 00:04:50,810 ]Well, what you would do is you would create the keep and then you would put these enormous walls right next to the keep and they would be very tall and they'd be very thick and then you wouldn't be able to get through them at all. But that's not the purpose of a castle. The purpose of a castle, the actual, real-life purpose, is to contain something to be able to... have a village inside and be able to have a community thrive. Inside your castle, inside your castle wall. And. And so the purpose of the castle, really, you do kind of need to be impenetrable in one sense. You need to have strong boundaries. But those boundaries, those walls need to be far enough out such that you can have a thriving community inside.

[ 00:05:38,610 ]And if you're not cultivating it— thriving community— if you're just focused on the thickness of the walls, then you're not really being masculine. That is not, that's not what the goal is. The goal is the community. The goal is what can thrive under your umbrella. And so I don't think we had a vision of that when I was young. And, you know, I think that a lot of the skills, a lot of the skills that enabled you to live your life and make a living. Back, you know. 30, 40, 50 years ago, they were a lot more physical. Um, and now they're a lot more. intellectual and emotional. I think that frankly, um, Women are wired in a way. That. allows them to be more productive and capable in modern society than men are.

[ 00:06:30,230 ]We have to kind of learn. how to do it. And, you know, most women take to it a little bit more naturally. And so that means that... If my job, like I said, is to make sure that my boy can thrive in the culture he graduates into, well then... I better teach him how to obtain those skills. And I better teach him not to suppress his natural tendencies, but... to allow them to be assets for himself as opposed to liabilities. Yeah, I appreciate that. And I really think that the metaphor about the castle is fantastic. I'm totally stealing that, by the way. Please do. I came up with it randomly someday. And the more I think about it, the more apt it is. Yeah no, it's it's legit.

[ 00:07:17,010 ]I could think of at least two or three situations where I could use that as a great metaphor to help some of the young men that are in my classes that do have questions and turn to me for advice because not because I'm a woman but because I feel like sometimes I'm the only person that they can trust. And so I think this is a great metaphor. So I'm definitely going to steal that. And I think you should write a book on that. Just FYI. I will consider it. Yes. Okay. So one of the questions that I have for you is you talked about, you know, the boys, the strength. Their natural capabilities sort of being vilified or being called toxic. Who benefits from this?

[ 00:07:57,660 ]Telling boys that they're toxic or telling boys that masculinity is bad. Who benefits from just villainizing or vilifying masculinity? Yeah, absolutely. That's a tremendous question. Because... In fact, nobody benefits. In fact, everybody loses. But it depends on how you look at the world. If you look at the world as a fixed pie, where my slice of the pie, the size of my slice of the pie is dependent upon how big your slice of the pie is. then I'm going to worry anytime your slice of the pie gets any bigger. Then that's taking away from my slice of the pie. And I'm going to consider you my enemy. But... And a lot of people view the world. Like that. And so when you look at.

[ 00:08:48,450 ]Um, you know, you look at the fact that that college admissions are more unbalanced today than they were when we instituted Title IX, except the other direction. Now, women are going to college much more often than men are. And when you look at that, and you're the kind of person that looks at the world and thinks in this fixed pie mentality, you think, 'Ah, those women have gained at my expense.' And. The women. Obviously. want to retain the benefits that they've gotten through the last 50 years of of our mentality change. And so they look at, you know, if they have a fixed pie mentality, then they're looking at men and saying, 'Well, no, you had your turn.' And it's appropriate for you to be suppressed.

[ 00:09:48,680 ]And so, if you have a fixed mentality of the world and you look at the world in terms of, 'Oh, those are the bad guys and we're the good guys' or 'vice versa,' then you are going, you're going to feel like you benefit by suppressing the other side. But that's not actually the way the world works. The world works on a variable pie mentality. We are— It's not about... me trying to figure out how much of your pie I should get. It's about us collaborating to grow the size of the pie. And that's what humans have, you know, frankly been doing for the last couple thousand years that has been absolutely so amazing. And, and.

[ 00:10:30,870 ]You know, if we allow ourselves to let our social media algorithms and our political environment and all of this stuff turn us into enemies, then we're not going to look at the world the way that we need to. And we are going to think. That. I benefit if you lose, and you're going to think that you benefit if I lose. And it's just simply not true. Absolutely. Definitely not. What is feminism to you? You know, I... I struggle with the concept of feminism because I understand... The definition of feminism more or less to be what is essentially gender equality. But it's a female-coded word. And. So I kind of have, I struggle with the concept of using a female-coded word. To describe something that's ostensibly supposed to be gender neutral.

[ 00:11:37,290 ]And I wish that we didn't have to do that. Um, I find it. Not particularly helpful to um call people out on, on things that they don't control about themselves. And whether or not you're on the side of righteousness. And so I, but I do think that the concept of gender equality, I feel like everybody should have their time. I'm at bat and they should have the same kinds of opportunities that everybody else has. And there should be equality of opportunity. And so, um, ideally that's what, that's what feminism is, right? Feminism is gender equality in that sense, equality of opportunity. Um, but I think it gets distorted. And I think it gets distorted again by.

[ 00:12:30,510 ]by these polarizing forces that we have in our world that, you know, one side, it gets distorted into this, I don't know, valorific thing where, you know, we're on the side of righteousness and anything that helps women is good. And anything that, that helps anyone else or hurts women is bad. Um, and, or it gets vilified on the other side where feminism is this closed-minded, you know, whatever, you know, whatever Andrew Tate would say. Say about feminism. Right. And I don't even know that I have visibility into that, but there's certainly, you know, something they say and it's neither of those things. So many Andrew Tate videos I cannot even tell you. I haven't watched any because, like, what happened for me was I started watching the video so just like I didn't even know who this guy was and it popped up on my TikTok feed and I was like, 'A big scroller' back in the you know, when

[ 00:13:24,840 ]whatever it the year was— that he came on to the scene and everyone was like, 'Oh my god, Andrew Tate' and he just like blew up everywhere it came on my TikTok and you couldn't— you couldn't hit uninterested or disinterested enough because it— the videos would keep popping up and keep popping up and once you watched one you were stuck. I mean, it was like I actually had to delete my TikTok account because I couldn't stand every second video being Andrew Tate. No kidding. Wow. That's a shame. I wanted to see other things. It's not that I cared or didn't care about his opinion or whatever. It was neutral. I was neutral about it. But I just felt like... I don't want to see this constantly, 24 hours on my feet.

[ 00:14:04,590 ]It's not good to have some. To watch some man screaming into a microphone 24 hours a day. Like this is, this is doing a number on my mental health. So anyway, so you said you talked about like feminism and you didn't, you said that you struggled with the phrase feminism because it's a, it's a, you know, a girl coded word or whatever, whatever the word was. And I'm thinking, so do you want to get rid of neutral language or have more gender neutral language? Like don't say patriarchy, don't say feminism, you know, that kind of thing. No. Um, No, I mean... I don't know. I don't. All right. I try not to think in those sorts of grand societal terms and stuff like that. I...

[ 00:14:47,290 ]My reaction is typically, all right, what do I need to do from a tactical standpoint to make sure that I do what's right and what's best for me and my family and the people under my care, right? And my stakeholders. Bye. I think it's a tough, tough problem. The fact is... That. What? Um, You know, the patriarchy. Is... is a real thing. And the way that our society, you know, most of the societies on the planet that have thrived. have historically been very male-centric. Societies and You know, frankly, if you... had power. you were probably male. And if you didn't. If you weren't male, you'd... Definitely didn't have power and a lot of males didn't even have power, and then and power was everything, right you know, you couldn't there wasn't a whole lot of social mobility, any of that stuff, and that that was real, and that has

[ 00:15:52,890 ]effects that carry over even into the modern day, both in actual fact and also in the way that we think about things. Um, And so I think it's useful to speak in those terms. But I also think that it... There's a lot of people that use this language in a way that is not helpful. And that is very polarizing. And is off-putting to the other side. And. You know. If you're not winning people over by what you're saying, all you're really doing. is reinforcing your own bubble. And I think we've seen what happens when... You do that. And I don't think it's good. Yeah, agreed. So when it comes to male development, what is something that you see is absolutely essential for raising boys in a healthy way?

[ 00:16:53,410 ]Um, the most essential thing. is modeling. The fact is that your son watches absolutely everything you do. And. If your actions don't meet your words, or don't... comport with your words, your words are meaningless. And in fact, you're doing yourself harm because you're just exposing yourself as a hypocrite and a liar. And you're teaching your son that that's an appropriate way to be. Or that's how the world is. Um... So the most important thing to raise a good man is to be a good man yourself. That means you have to know what one is, right? You have to have values. You have to understand what it means to be a good man. And then the second thing that I would say is vulnerability.

[ 00:17:50,630 ]I had a situation last night where Um, I was putting the kids to sleep. And it happened last night. And we ended up getting in odds to each other. And I got... My daughter started yelling at me and my son started yelling at my daughter. And I got mad and I started yelling and I, and it was all around this book that my son wanted me to read. And... I, you know, I got mad. I threw the book away. And. I was yelling at my daughter to go into bed and my son was getting scared and I could see it happening. And at the moment I'm sitting here and I'm angry and. I'm yelling and I'm like, 'What are you doing, man?' And it certainly had 10% to do with what the kids were, what was going on with the kids.

[ 00:18:45,610 ]But it was 90% what was going on in my world. And I just had a tough week, right? And... So you know, I got away from the situation and I took a deep breath and and I went into the kids' room and and they were at that point, my daughter had gone to her bed, like I had asked her to do, or like I screamed at her to do. My son was in my bed, really, really upset. And it had been like, I don't know, maybe two minutes at this point had passed. I went over to my daughter first because she took kind of the brunt of it. And I said, listen, man. I'm really sorry. For how. I reacted. To that that's Not appropriate. I should not have yelled at you.

[ 00:19:32,270 ]I should not have done any of that. And I'm really, really sorry. And she, you know, she forgave me. And then I went into my son and I did the same thing. And I told him, you know, I saw that you were scared and I don't ever want you to be scared of me. And, um, And so, like, I... I don't know that... I don't know that people... You got to do that sort of thing. You know, if your kids don't. You're going to screw up, man. And you can't be perfect. And everybody, nobody expects you to be perfect. But if you can't own up to stuff you've done wrong? How the heck? Are your kids going to know how to live their lives, right?

[ 00:20:19,150 ]I mean, they just see this guy who... You know, can't even navigate the world properly, and that's just not cool. And so, um, yeah, I think it. I think it boils down to those and you know, it starts— that's the fountainhead of it. Those two things. Um, are probably where it starts. Yeah, I appreciate the notion that you had a human reaction and then you went back to your children. You apologized and you owned what occurred. And then how did your children respond after that? Have you noticed that they're acting differently towards you or did things go back to normal? No, they went, yeah, I mean, it was totally back to normal, and we all gave each other a hug, and, you know, they went to bed, and everything was fine.

[ 00:21:10,500 ]And you know, I I don't get angry very often. My kids have a way of pushing my buttons in a way that nobody else ever has. I and this is actually something I really struggle with. I am NOT an angry person. And so you'd think, oh, well, that'll be good for you because, you know, when you have kids, you won't be so mad. Well, it doesn't work that way because I'm not an angry person. I actually don't have the muscles. I don't have the skills to handle my anger the way somebody who gets angry all the time does. And so... My kids, because they can push my buttons in ways that I've never experienced before, end up making me madder than I've ever experienced before.

[ 00:21:51,050 ]And that now I'm in new territory and I'm not necessarily going to handle it skillfully. Whereas somebody who was more angry would be able to. And so I kind of struggle with that. And, you know, I mean. All I can do really is just acknowledge that I'm human and. Say, I'm sorry. And I'll do better next time. And this is, that's not who I want to be for you. And you know, I tell them, you know, my kids yell at me and each other and stuff. And I constantly tell them that that's not the, that's not the right way to interact with the world. So if I do it, well, it's equally true to me. The rules apply both ways. Yeah, they definitely do.

[ 00:22:29,580 ]So is there any truth to the fact that you have to communicate differently with your daughter versus your son? Andrew Tate does talk a lot about treating his daughters. If you i don't know, obviously i know you're not like super familiar with his content, but I am. He talks a lot about how he treats his daughters, like little princesses, and basically gives them whatever they want. All this stuff, and he wants them to be soft, feminine, whatever. And with his boys, he'll be like, 'Drop on the ground right now and give me 100 push-ups,' you know, and he's he's pushing them around and stuff like that. It seems to me that that was sort of how his father raised him. Yeah. And so, you know, that's a whole different conversation.

[ 00:23:11,790 ]But, you know, when you had this moment, did you talk to your children differently because of their gender? You know, I definitely interact with my children and I feel differently about my children. Based on their gender. And. What Andrew Tate describes in that circumstance, and this is the thing about Andrew Tate. Um, and again, I'm not super familiar with all of his content. I'm, you know, my familiarity is at this 50,000 foot view, but you know, something like 60 or 80% of what he has to say. It's pretty spot on. The place where he goes wrong, I think, I mean, his identification of the issues. I think is not wrong. I mean, he's like, I've seen a bunch of stuff from him. I'm like, yeah, that's not, that's right.

[ 00:24:00,290 ]The place where I think he's problematic is when he starts... To come up with solutions that involve, you know, stuff that is oppressive to other people. And that's just never going to fly, right? I mean, that's just never the right way to go. And, and so, I mean, it's not effective and it's not. It's just not. I mean it's not right. And so, um, I think, you know, so what, you know... It's like this thing about that you're describing about how he treats his daughters. Oh, they're princesses and they're, you know, they're, they get it, whatever they want and all this stuff versus his sons where it's dropping. Give me 20. That is something that as fathers we feel. We feel that it's our responsibility— to turn our boys into men and make them tough.

[ 00:24:57,160 ]And, you know, to protect our girls, right? That, in and of itself, is not an inappropriate reflex. But we do have to acknowledge that in our modern world, it's not— you know, we don't have the same pressures and the same opportunities and the same other things. I mean, the fact is, if your girl grows up and she... expects to be handed everything, well, then she's going to be a brat. And she's going to be kind of a pain in the ass to be around. And she might have a tough life as a result of that. And if your boy grows up to be, you know, this, you know, really, really tough and, you know, he's not supposed to show emotion. He only shows anger and all that stuff.

[ 00:25:39,760 ]He's going to be real brittle. And he's not going to be able to handle a lot of some of the life's challenges. Kind of like what you're talking about with the castle walls. The walls would be really, really, really thick. But the inside of that community, very fragile. There's no community. There is nothing, yeah. So you've got nothing. You've got nothing. What's the point of the walls? And so... Um, And so, like, again, it's like 80%, you know, there is something there. Men and women are different. Boys and girls are different. In general, but also specific boys and specific girls are different from each other. And boys are different from each other. People are different. And. There are generalities and there are specificities. That's okay. That's appropriate.

[ 00:26:27,930 ]And, you know, we wouldn't have this amazing life if we were all the same. And, and so. I think it's okay to recognize that. And so, you know, and... So going back to your question. Did you respond, in this specific moment, did you respond to your own kids differently because... they were girls and boys. I didn't in this circumstance. I behaved inappropriately towards both of them at the same time. And. I copped to it. And I apologize for it. And they both got the exact same apology and they both got the same hug and they both got the same kiss. You know, it's interesting. I had a really, really interesting realization when my son was about 18 months old. He came up.

[ 00:27:14,710 ]And I think my wife said to him, 'Oh, give your dad a kiss.' And so he came up and he came to kiss me on the lips like he just kissed my wife. And I turned my head and he kissed me on the cheek. And my wife said, 'Why did you have him kiss you on the cheek? Why not? Why not on the lips?' And I said, um, it was just reflex. I said, well, because men don't kiss each other on the lips. And she goes. She goes, huh. And then doesn't say anything. And so that just turned in my head for about a day. I was just like, huh, what do I, why is there, I mean, like. I love my son. I, you know, he loves me.

[ 00:27:59,250 ]He wants to kiss me on the leg. Like, what is my problem? And. thought and thought and thought about it. And I was like, you know what? That's silly. And so I went to my wife and I said, you know what? I've been thinking about this thing ever since you said that yesterday. And, you know, I think that's silly. And I think I'm not going to have that be the rule. And she goes, yeah, I've been thinking about it too. I'm really glad that you made that decision. And so, you know, now. My boy kisses me on the lips and it's great. Wow. It's something I had to come over. You know, get over it. Yeah. Is there some sort of like unspoken rule in the male community that, you know, that pertains to affection with males?

[ 00:28:41,600 ]Yes. Yeah, it's gay. It's gay and gay is bad. When you were growing up in the 1970s and 80s. Wow. And that's what it was. That's what it is. You don't show affection to other men. And. What an absolute freaking prison is that? What a prison it is! We've really done ourselves a disservice by doing that. And, frankly, I mean— my wife. My wife has eight different people that she tells every detail of her life to, and it's really cathartic to her, and she's got these healthy relationships and really close relationships with people. And I found out about two years ago, my best friend from high school. We met as freshmen, the first day of freshman class in high school. And we were best friends. We were roommates in college.

[ 00:29:30,230 ]We've been best friends for, oh gosh, it's been 35 years. And he calls me up and he says, 'I was the best man at his wedding 25 years ago. He calls me up and he says, 'I got to talk to you about something.' And I said, as long as you're not going to tell me that you and your wife are getting divorced, we're in good shape. I was making a joke. And he's kind of quiet. And I go. Are you serious? And he goes, yeah, that's the deal. And I had the predictable reaction. I'm like, oh, well, we got to do something about this. What's the problem? You know, let's solve it. And he's like. He goes, no, man. And he starts telling me about what.

[ 00:30:03,540 ]his preceding decade had been like in his marriage. And it was terrible for both of them, right? I mean, and it was the right thing to do to get divorced. And. I thought when that happened, I was like. What an asshole! Like, how did it've been going on for 10 years, and he didn't mention anything to me? And then I realized, like, 'What kind of friend am I?' because he didn't share this with me. And then I realized, wait a minute, I've got stuff in my life I don't share with him. Like most of it, I don't share anything with him either. And what kind of friend am I to not give him the opportunity to be that close of a friend to me?

[ 00:30:45,730 ]And that's one of the things— I mean, that was one of my realizations about the masculinity crisis— is we're wired this way. We are wired not to share details of our lives, not to be emotional, not to show anything but this outward appearance of strength. And so... you know, that makes you really brittle. And that makes you, it makes you not close to people. And you are missing out on the best part of life if you can't get close to people. Yeah, that is interesting. Who is there to model? You've got your Andrew Tate's, you've got different people. Who's a male figure other than just... You know, you. For your for your kids. Are there any other male figures that people can genuinely look up to and say that's alive?

[ 00:31:38,500 ]Okay, not somebody dead 100 years ago, or 1000 years ago, but like, somebody alive today that males can look up to to look up to and have like a positive connection with even if they don't know that person personally. Yeah. Who are the heroes? They're... are a zillion of them. There are millions of excellent men on the planet. The problem is they don't get famous. They don't rise. to the top. of their sport and make headlines because what gets attention is pissing people off. And a good man doesn't piss people off. And so... I mean, there are role models all over the place. But you're not going to see them in the headlines. Because they're not worth writing about because they have these. boring, wonderful lives.

[ 00:32:33,390 ]They have great relationships with their wives and their children and all of that stuff. And so. That's not news. So you have to, you know, you have to find them, I guess, other ways and you have to meet them in person. Thank you. Think that's interesting—I like that now. When we met, when we first met, for the listeners, Sean and I had talked about what masculinity was, and I had explained to him that somebody asked me, they said, 'How would you define?' Masculinity and the context I don't know. Do you remember this Sean? When we talked about, there was just like one guy, whatever. So there was this one guy, and he was talking about how feminism is like the bane of men's existence and that it's this and it's that and you know, it's just kind of the typical thing that people say.

[ 00:33:19,610 ]And so, anyway. He asked me, he said, 'What do you think? Feminism is or not feminism?' But masculinity is. And I told him, I said, 'I think masculinity is whatever is worthy of being called masculine.' And then do you remember what I remember your response to this thing? Do you remember what you said to that, Sean? I don't. I don't. You said to me that that was a circular definition. Of the word. Yeah. Of the word. And so... I just want to know, like, in your opinion, is that an accurate definition of what masculinity is? Whatever is worthy of being called masculine? So I love this concept of worthiness. Yeah. I love that. That's certainly a part of it. And. You know, I think about...

[ 00:34:07,389 ]You know, if you think about. If you think about what masculinity is, right? Um... You know, someone who's masculine is strong. But they're not brittle. Right? And I think that healthy masculinity. It kind of combines. these sort of traditional masculine. gifts or these traits of protection, of courage, of taking decisive action, providing for others without really consideration of what that means to yourself. Um, And it combines it with what modern life. demands. You need to have emotional literacy. You have to have flexibility. You have to have the ability— to be vulnerable, right. Without this, you won't fall apart into a puddle. Anytime you start to speak about your emotions, you know— think about... think about what it means to be... a protector.

[ 00:35:10,669 ]Like, you know, 30,000 years ago, that meant warding off physical threats. Right? You had to fight off a bear. But today... That's not what being a protector is. Real protection means creating emotional safety. And it means that... Like you know, it means your son feels safe enough to tell you when he's struggling or to open up about his porn addiction, right or how much he's gaming, or, or whatever his struggle And it means that you can stay emotionally regulated when everybody else around him is losing their minds. And so, you know, I think that, if I had to distill masculinity, healthy masculinity, down to a single concept, it would be... That. Your source of stability. For the people under your domain. Yeah.

[ 00:36:03,830 ]And, but it's, you know, obviously, it can go as deep as you want. Yeah, that's for sure. When I think of like what's worthy of being called masculine, even when I talk to that guy, I gave—I wish I could remember the exact words that I used, but I gave him some specific examples of when. If you're talking to a little child, for example, and you're a man, and you're a full-grown man, and you're talking to a five-year-old boy. And you get down on your knees and you get down on that child's level. masculinity to me is not the Andrew Tate way of 'Hey, shut up, boy, stop crying To me, that is not worthy of being called masculine. What would be worthy in that moment of being called masculine from my perspective would be getting down on those knees.

[ 00:36:52,580 ]And getting at that. Making sure that you're at eye level with that child. And talking to him or her, whoever it is. And being emotionally present, like what you're saying, and being supportive and helping them navigate whatever they're going through, but still being strong, being strong, and being okay enough for that child to be able to trust you in that moment. That to me would be worthy of being called masculine. But then, of course, there are situations that are much different than that, where there's an actual threat, whatever that may be. It could be physical, could be virtual. Could be, you know, a different type of threat because we're facing a lot right now. There's a lot of things coming at people, and families, and kids in particular.

[ 00:37:33,250 ]And so, whatever that— male figure has to become. In that moment, to quote unquote, be the protector, or whatever it is. That, to me, is worthy of being called masculine, whether that's actually physically fighting, whether that is being incredibly patient or and merciful, or whether that is executing justice to its fullest extent possible, whatever the situation calls for. That is worthy of being called masculine. is masculine to me. Anything less than that is not, to me. I don't know if that makes sense. Yeah. I mean, I'm with you. And I'm still troubled by the circularity of it. I mean, there's a subjectivity in that definition that... That means that masculinity is in the eye of the beholder a little bit. Yeah. And I don't know, maybe it is.

[ 00:38:26,520 ]You know, I mean, you find... One interesting thing about it, my wife and I have been having a lot of discussions recently about what's masculine energy and what's feminine energy. What? You don't. Women. can have masculine energy. And. Men can have feminine energy. And they can. They can need it. They can thrive on it, right? I mean, that's part of what we need from each other. And it's almost a shame that. we're stuck in those terms. Again, it goes back to what I was saying about feminism. It's like, these are loaded words that have meaning outside of what they truly are. And so it's a shame that we don't have words that... that don't have that don't carry that baggage with them. But. I mean, it's... Like.

[ 00:39:20,610 ]Thank you. your traditional masculine virtues. We all know what they are. We all feel what they are. And... And so, you know. I think that that's okay. I think you can say, oh, it's worthy of being called masculine because I think we pretty much in our society have a concept of what that means. Yeah, there's something innate you can just feel when it's right. So when I think of it, if I see a guy and an old lady is crossing the street, and he does not help her, or maybe he doesn't give up his seat to a pregnant woman on a bus or something like that. And then, of course, you have the ignorant people out there saying, 'Oh, equal rights.' Well, if you want equal rights, then, you know, whatever.

[ 00:40:02,550 ]They say stupid stuff like that. But for me, none of those people are masculine in the slightest bit. They're not masculine because what they're doing it to me is not worthy; it's not worthy of being called masculine. And masculine because it doesn't make me trust them. So I want to be able to trust that the person is forthright, steadfast, upright, righteous, courageous, self-sacrificing, patient. And I know that's a lot, but we can all exercise to some level and degree all of those qualities and traits— feminine or masculine. And so if I see a person not doing the thing that is right to me because I have a very steadfast binary way of looking at the world. Right and wrong. That and I know a lot of people disagree with that because there's like, oh, there's gray areas and there's this and that.

[ 00:40:53,020 ]To me, there's not. To me, there's not. There's right and wrong. And if I see... a person who you know, is a guy, a male, and they're not doing the right thing. I don't think. They're masculine just because they're trying to be the tough guy, because it doesn't make me trust them. But if I see a young, let's say, a teenager, for example. And a teenager is taking care of his little sister. And he's doing everything he can. To make sure that she's fed, she's bathed, and she's put to bed. And that's her brother, or maybe it's her father, whatever the case may be. I see that and I say, 'Wow.' What a man. Hmm. You know what I mean? For me, it's about trust. Now, do you have a?

[ 00:41:36,420 ]I have a question for you, but I want to just get your response to that. Yeah, I'd love to press on that a little bit. Yeah, please. Because. If you see a woman doing that kind of thing. You know, um, taking care of a little girl in the exact same way. That's not masculinity, is it? Or what is it? That's a good question. Now I'm the one being interviewed. I love it. I see coming on the show with a fellow podcaster. I just think it just adds a level of, you know, what's the word? Dynamism. Whatever the word is. Dynamism. Dynamism. Thank you. It's adding a level of dynamism to the conversation that normally doesn't happen. So but I think this is cool. So for me, when I see a woman taking care of her of her child.

[ 00:42:21,250 ]If she is doing so because she doesn't have someone to support her, like a male figure, I do put her more in that masculine category. Because she's trying to do both jobs because she's forced to, but when I see a woman being very nurturing, very loving to her child, and this doesn't mean that all women are this way, because I'm not nurturing. I'm really not. I have way more masculine energy than some women. But when I see a woman taking care of her child, I think to myself, that's a great mother. That's someone who reminds me of my own mom. and i give her kudos i tip my proverbial hat to her in the same way that i do a man so i don't look at it differently like oh she's just doing what's natural to her and he's just doing what He's just doing something because he's a great man, you know, because I know where you're going with this is that if you see a guy doing something, it makes him great.

[ 00:43:18,450 ]But the woman is really just doing what her responsibility. Maybe that's certainly one of. The implications to that, yeah, I'm just like that's not me, I don't look. I think it's good to tease those things apart, but I think I think that what you're getting back, getting at, really goes back to that castle metaphor. Is that masculinity is about building a castle such that a community can thrive inside of it, under the umbrella of this castle. We feel safe. We feel secure. And we are able to prosper. And so a man, his role, or a masculine entity, let's say, his role in our society is to create that safe space. And so to the extent you witness a man creating that safe space, you feel like they're masculine.

[ 00:44:07,500 ]To the extent that the man is doing some of the things that might be associated with creating the safe space, like exuding strength, but is using that strength to menace somebody. That doesn't come across as masculine because it's not being used to create a safe space. Exactly. And that's where the worthiness comes in. Yeah. Yeah, I think that's right. I think your way of saying that, that masculinity is what's worthy of being called masculine, is a shorthand for talking about that whole concept. Exactly. Creating that safe space where people can thrive. And yeah, no, I agree with you 100%. I'm so glad we distilled it down to that point because that's exactly what it is for me. So on a different note, it's so funny that we're talking.

[ 00:44:52,820 ]About this, I love talking to someone that's just, you know, cerebral about it. Because I hear a lot of things that are just not it. It's just not good anyway. So the question I'm getting back to focusing now before I go off on a little tirade about all this. The question that I have, this actually doesn't come from me. This is a question from Reddit. And the person says, 'How do you parent a boy with non-traditionally masculine interests?' This is the great thing about the moment we find ourselves in. Ah. When I was growing up, if you didn't have traditionally masculine interests, you were ostracized. And you were made to feel lesser. And so, you know, our heroes were the captain of the football team, et cetera.

[ 00:45:47,870 ]And a lot of those institutions, a lot of the things that have created. Uh, masculinity. Uh, rights of passage, those sorts of things, those, those institutions are crumbling. And. They're going away. And that's a real problem in the sense that, Okay, we now don't have rites of passage because the institutions aren't there to make that happen. But. It's also an opportunity. In the sense that we get to reinvent our way of doing that. We have to do it, so it's a problem, but we get to do it, so it's an opportunity. And we can design it however we want. And the fact is... I struggle mightily with this because I find myself wanting my son to excel at sports and to do all sorts of stuff, and I want him to be smart and I want him to be a really good reader and I want him to do all of that stuff.

[ 00:46:50,020 ]But if I really inspect my soul, I acknowledge and recognize that I want that stuff because it reflects well on me. It makes people think I'm a good dad if they see my son being a really great basketball player. Well... That's not healthy. It's not healthy for me to try to get my son to valorize me. I need to get my son. To find his place in the world where he's going. To excel and to thrive. And if that means that... He's going to be a football player, which by the way, I don't want to play in football, right? Because man, he's got a great brain and I do not want to risk that. But if he... is desperate to do it, well, I'm going to figure out a way to make it work.

[ 00:47:44,580 ]Or if that means that he's going to be a ballet dancer. Then that's what we're going to do. And I want to give them exposure. To all of those things. And. That's great. If your son... doesn't have those traditional... Masculine. things? Well. Let him, I mean, if he's getting passion out of it, then let him exercise that passion. Alanis Morissette has this amazing song called Ablaze. And, you know, one of the, it's my favorite song with my son. And, and one of the lyrics is my mission is to keep the light in your eyes ablaze. That's it. That's the whole freaking thing. You just want to keep the light in their eyes ablaze. The world is coming to extinguish that freaking light. Why are you going to contribute to that bullshit?

[ 00:48:41,070 ]Like, your mission is to keep that light alive as long as possible. If you can foster that into adulthood, you have succeeded. So if they're into whatever, and by the way, the world might come for them, right? Your kid's a ballet dancer and people are going to make fun of them. You know what? That's an opportunity for them to learn to overcome that stuff. Yeah. Yeah, I like that. I'm thinking I'm processing the light in your eyes comment and stuff like that. So we'll probably have to come back to that in just a second. When you talked about your child and being a father and being a role model and modeling and all those kinds of things, and especially in the context of modeling being an essential element to masculinity and raising a healthy, masculine boy.

[ 00:49:30,030 ]For you, when did you first feel like you were stepping into your role as a father figure? Was it when, you know, the baby came and it's biological? Okay, he's here. I'm a... I'm a father now. Or was this something like that moment with the kiss? Or was this something emotional? Or was this something spiritual? When did you first feel like you stepped into that role? Yeah. Um, Man, I love that question. And so there were these two moments. Um, When my son was born. Uh, my son was born. in Chicago, Illinois and in the middle of a polar vortex. And for some reason, Two days before he was due, my wife and I decided to go to some friend's house to play some games. And. We didn't bring any of our stuff.

[ 00:50:30,200 ]We didn't drive there. We took an Uber. And we're just hanging out playing games. And every once in a while, my wife was like, 'Ah, man, I'm just having the worst cramps.' And I'm going. Wait a minute. How far apart are your cramps? She goes, about two minutes. And I go. I think those are contractions, man. And she goes, 'Oh my God. Oh no.' Now, fortunately, our friends lived a couple blocks away from the hospital. So we walked to the hospital. It's like minus 20. And we walked to the hospital and we're stopping every two minutes for her to like have a contraction. And then, you know, we walk across the street and then, and then, you know, we go. The block and then, oh, we got to stop again.

[ 00:51:15,680 ]And just as we're pulling in, we're just walking into the maternity ward at the hospital in downtown Chicago. And there's this thing that happens when you're in Chicago or any cold place. Right? And you've got the revolving doors. And so, you know, when two parties are approaching the revolving door at the same time, one of them has to kind of speed up and one of them slows down so that you enter in different chambers. And so, we did. We were doing that. And because I was walking with my wife, this, this woman who was also walking into the maternity ward, but she wasn't pregnant. She was walking. She sped up to get there in front of us.

[ 00:51:48,990 ]And of course, so she got in line ahead of me and my wife, and she just must have felt like the biggest jerk in the entire world because she had. Like sped up to get in the building before this woman, who was clearly in labor by the time she noticed it, and so they waved us through, and they got us in, and actually, it ended up happening such that the boy didn't actually come for another two days. My wife was in labor. So the labor kind of stopped and then just kind of continued through the weekend and then ended up, ended up, uh, uh, he, he ended up being born on Sunday. This is a Friday. This is wild.

[ 00:52:26,540 ]But in answer to your question, that moment that I realized that I had never actually, at that moment where we were walking to the hospital, I realized I had never really come to terms with the fact that our lives. You know this thing growing in my wife's body was going to upend our lives in this in a way that we weren't prepared for, in spite of the fact that we were acting like we were prepared for it. And. When he was finally born... My wife fell in love with him. I mean, immediately. And there's a hormonal thing that happens there where... you know, she's got all this exertion and she's got all of this physical impact on her. And then it's finally all over and the endorphins and all of that stuff.

[ 00:53:17,270 ]I mean, she was madly in love with this boy from the very, very instant. And I wasn't. I was looking at this thing, and, as far as I'm concerned, all it really did was make noise, and it consumed milk and dirty diapers. And it was, I ended up having to drive him around in the middle of the night all the time because he couldn't sleep and he had colic and all this stuff. It was, and I didn't feel any connection to him at all. And I felt like a failure. In that moment, I felt like a failure. Because I would hear these stories of these fathers who were the same, like the mothers are. Oh, I just fell in love with my son. The instant I looked in his eyes, I saw my own eyes.

[ 00:53:57,080 ]And I just, man, I fell in love with him. And I thought, gosh, I mean, that's the way I'm supposed to feel. Maybe I'm a sociopath or something. And... I didn't tell him. Yeah, a lot of parents go through that. I bet. Well, this is what I discovered. Yeah. I started talking about it and I kind of mentioned it to some other guy and he's like, 'Oh yeah, I had the exact same thing.' I mentioned it to another guy. Oh, yeah, the exact same thing. I mean, you know, I thought it was weird. It turns out that that's the rule. It's the exception that's the guy who looks in his son's eyes and sees his own eyes and falls madly in love. That's the 20%.

[ 00:54:36,520 ]The 80% are people who are like, 'Oh my God, man, how am I going to have to feed this?' And. Finally, there came a time when I was changing his diaper. And I held my fingers up. And he was just done. I just changed his diaper and I held my fingers up and he reached up and he grabbed him and he pulled himself up. And that was the first time. He was about six weeks old at this time. And I felt this twinge. of, oh, wait a minute, this is my purpose. My purpose here is to... get him to be able to do things. and navigate the world. And I think that was the moment. So I had the first moment when I realized, oh, wait a minute, I'm nowhere near where I need to be on that.

[ 00:55:21,230 ]And then I had that next moment six weeks later. where um i finally got to see that light at the end of the tunnel where it was like okay this is This is what it's like. This is what fatherhood is. And I could get behind that. And that's when it clicked for me, I think. Wow. What an amazing story. And it makes perfect sense. It just makes perfect sense. Now, I have to ask a question that's more personal in nature. My mom and I were having a conversation. This was, I don't know, three, two, three years ago. I had always heard, so this is what my mom had always echoed. She had always echoed this to me. She said, 'Nikki, men are the protectors and the providers.

[ 00:56:06,300 ]Men are the protectors and the providers.' And she has said this so many times over the years that, I don't know. Never internalized it. I had repeated it a couple of times, maybe just because I had heard her say it and whatever context or situation I was in, maybe it felt like the right thing to say, or something like that. But but then I started to kind of think to myself, 'This doesn't resonate with me.' The reason why is because, when I was six, my parents got divorced. You know, it's all in the past now; it's all good. You know, they're still, they can still talk, they're cordial, all that stuff. You know, it's many years ago. I'm 38 now, so it's been 32 years. Yeah, so it's totally cool.

[ 00:56:44,540 ]But when my dad left, one of the things that I couldn't reconcile when I was probably Until about two or three years ago, I just couldn't reconcile the statement. That my mom had always said about men being protectors and providers. And then, of course, you know, my dad leaving and I was like, 'Nope, that's not true. That's definitely not true. Protector and provider.' And then you do that. That makes no sense. And so I looked at my mom and I said, 'Mom, that's not true.' And she goes, 'She kind of like jerked back like that.' And she was like, 'What do you mean?' And I said, 'Well, think about it. I said, 'You. And Nanny, who's my grandma, I call her Nanny, I said, 'y'all.' Are the only ones who have ever protected.' Now my grandpa too.

[ 00:57:26,600 ]My grandpa too. He has as well. But on a much larger scale, I told her, I said, 'You and my grandma are the only people who have been the providers and the protectors.' I said, 'What man, of course, outside of my grandpa, has been a protector and a provider for you, for my nanny, or for me?' Can you tell me one? And she was like, 'Oh shit.' And she had just kind of subscribed. To this programming about the the men being protectors and the providers and stuff like that, so my question is: in light of this story that you've just told about how you know it took you some time— not a ton of time, but it took you some time to get to the point where you felt like a father, you felt like you were stepping into that.

[ 00:58:08,410 ]into that role, so my question is: why is it that some fathers never step into that role? They just, how is it possible? That you can look at your child and maybe I'm saying this because I'm a female, but I could never. Ever. Look at a child, no matter how old they are, and walk away. I don't know how so many men do it. Man, that is... I think. I don't know. I don't know for sure. And so I'm going to try to put myself in the mind of of a person who did that, and I would think that. You know, sometimes Sometimes you feel like you just screwed everything up so badly. That it's a lost cause. And the world is better off. Without you in it.

[ 00:59:14,880 ]I mean, that little world, that microcosm. And so... Maybe I need to just... Start over. And do something else. Now, of course, if you do start over and do something else... it wasn't circumstantial that you ended up in that position before it was you. And so you're still going to be in the next space and nothing's changed. And so you're likely to repeat that cycle. So, um... It did repeat again. Yeah, and I think that... You know, the part of me that resonates with. A father who would walk away from his family like that? Is the part of me that that experiences that, that it just, every once in a while. It gets pretty overwhelming. And there's a lot about being a father.

[ 01:00:17,520 ]And about being the protector and the provider. And, you know, I think the way that I would correct your mom's statement is not. She said, 'men are the protectors and the providers.' But what she probably, it's closer to the truth, to say men should be the protectors and the providers. Thank you. And that's what we expect from it. A good man is a protector and a provider. And, um, there's a lot about being a protector and a provider about being a good man. That is thankless. Um, the... You know, we did a ski trip this past weekend and there was a storm coming in. On the day that we were leaving. And. I hadn't concluded, based on the weather and based on the forecast and all of these things, that if we didn't get out of town, first of all, we needed to leave.

[ 01:01:11,860 ]That day. And if we didn't leave that day, we were going to get stuck in the mountains until Thursday. And that would have been a disaster. Moreover, if we didn't leave soon... the roads out of town would get pretty treacherous. And that was less safe. And so we needed to kind of up and go. And so it was my job to get the family going. And nobody wanted to. It was early in the morning. You know, we'd just gotten done with this great trip. And it kind of put a damper, really, on the trip because, you know, I was cracking the whip a little bit. And. I don't know, maybe I didn't do it perfectly. Maybe there was a way to do it in a way that the family was still excited and I didn't put a damper on the trip.

[ 01:01:54,390 ]Um, but it had to be done and nobody liked me for it and that was thankless, but that's— I was being the protector there, and I had to do it. And. So there's something that happens when, you know, you've been doing this thankless task. And. You're getting beaten up for it. At some point, you know, I mean, I think it could be natural to conclude that. Yeah, maybe it's just better if I weren't here. And that's wrong. I mean, it's not better if you're not there, I don't think. You know, that's too bad that people do that. Yeah, that's a really insightful answer. And I think you, you just, yeah, I think you really hit the nail on the head because I'm not in that person's mind, my dad's mind, but I.

[ 01:02:46,040 ]and I love my dad. This is not an indictment on my dad. We talk and we're, you know, we're good friends. I'm actually like a clone of him. We're like exactly alike. Even my grandma the other day, I was sitting on the couch and she was like, 'Oh my god, you look like your dad I love that. We're literally twins. We like all the same stuff— sports, the seafood, you know, all those kinds of things. So it's not an indictment on him. I just wanted to clarify that. Understand more about how someone could, could do that? Because never in my wildest wildest dreams could I ever walk away. It just couldn't— it just couldn't happen. So when you said, 'um' that sometimes you being a dad and doing certain things as a dad can be kind of a thankless job.

[ 01:03:33,860 ]Mm-hmm. I'm going to push back on that just a little bit, as compared. As compared to what? Oh, I wouldn't compare it to anything. I think there's a lot of stuff. You know, when you have responsibilities, your responsibility is to the outcome. And so a lot of times. People want a particular outcome, but they're not thrilled. To go through the process that is required to get to that outcome. And so if you're responsible for creating that outcome for your family. And you know, your family doesn't want to go through that process. Well, then that's going to be thankless. And you know, that's true regardless of whether you're the dad or the mom. In fact, I mean, it's probably more true for mothers than it is for fathers in a lot of ways. Yes, because that's what I was trying to get at is like, I was wondering if you think that women are more publicly celebrated and appreciated in ways that men are just not. Let me think about that for a moment. Mm-hmm.

[ 01:04:52,690 ]I think that it's definitely the case that I think men and women in our culture are celebrated for different things by default. But, you know, I think that, you know, there's, there's that joke that everyone talks about. Like, if, if, if I take care of my kids, then I'm babysitting. But if my wife takes care of the kids, then she's just being a mom. Yeah, that's right. That's... That's the way it is, and it shouldn't be. Um and so yeah, I mean, I don't, I, I uh, yeah, that's, that's definitely it. It's, it's, it's definitely different and it is, that is not ideal. And I think we would be smart as a culture to eliminate all of the places where people aren't being valued for their contribution. Yeah, definitely.

[ 01:05:51,570 ]So, as we kind of, I really love this podcast. I'm definitely going to have to have you back on the show if you are so amenable to that. Of course. But, so, if you could kind of distill this whole entire conversation into one piece of actionable or just principled advice for a father who may be struggling with his own masculinity, what would you say to that person? Who's listening to this? Yeah, I'm laughing right now because this is the exact question I ask at the end of every single one of my podcasts. Oh, are you stuck? Oh my God. Exact same question. Give me one principle that people should live by. Oh, my God. I have a collection of those principles. Oh, my gosh. And my mind is going blank.

[ 01:06:39,840 ]Because you've never been asked your own question. I know. I know. I can't even answer my own question. Okay. And, you know, I... But I think I do know what I would say. Yeah, it's coming to you. And especially along the theme of what we've been talking about is that It comes down to grace. And you need to give yourself the grace that you're a great parent. And the fact that you care about whether you're a great parent makes you a great parent. And. You need to give yourself that grace and you need to give your, your spouse or your co-parent or your. you know, whomever you're parenting with, if there is anybody you need to give them that grace and you need to give your kids the grace and you.

[ 01:07:42,210 ]You just need to assume that everyone, including yourself, is doing their best and it'll all be pretty good, right? And of course, things can get better and you should strive for that. But man, you know, I... I mentor this guy. And I was thinking about him yesterday. And he's in his mid-20s. And he's had a tough go of it in a lot of ways. You can tell when you talk to him that he just wants... to be proud of himself so badly. But he doesn't allow himself to feel pride for anything good he does. And. I've been working with him for... a couple months now and it was just in just yesterday when I finally realized that that that was part of it. He's not.

[ 01:08:53,680 ]He's so hungry to be proud, but he won't let himself feel pride. He shits on all of his accomplishments. And so, like, Give yourself the freaking grace, man. You're doing your best. Keep on. Keep on keeping on, you know. Do you think that, like, just having him hang out with fathers that are proud of themselves, would kind of just blow that out? I think that... he definitely needs to see that modeled more. And I think part of his... Part of his issue is his own father is a very high-achieving person. Who? is, man, he takes a lot of pride in everything he does. And most of it is earned and appropriate. And so I think that this is one of his ways to assert his independence from his own dad.

[ 01:09:58,920 ]Like, oh, I'm not going to have false pride. Hmm. And. But instead of not allowing himself to have false pride, he's not allowing himself to have any pride. You know, I mean, he was... He was telling me a story the other day about how... He was at work, and he works in a retail context, and a woman came up to him, and it became clear through their conversation that this woman, who was a little bit older than him, was hitting on him. And. It became clear when he was telling me the story that this woman was hitting on him, but he didn't recognize it. And then he was telling me this, oh, well, you know, I mean, she was, you know, and I would never date her and all that.

[ 01:10:50,120 ]I was just like. Back up a minute, man. This is freaking amazing. Like, you should feel. Like a million fricking bucks. This is the best thing in life. There's almost nothing better in life than when you're hanging out at work and a woman comes up and hits on you. And yet, you know, he wasn't feeling that. And, um... You know. I don't know why. The next time I talk to him, I'm going to point this out. And I'm going to. Ask him why. And. You know, maybe we'll get to the bottom of it. And maybe it'll help a little bit. I hope you guys do. Keep me posted. Well. What would you say, so you got all that with the fathers and stuff.

[ 01:11:34,720 ]What would you say to a teenager who's struggling, like obviously a male teacher, a male adolescent, who's struggling with his own master? Masculinity not in the like, gay, straight, type thing, but he just doesn't know—like, who he is. He maybe doesn't feel comfortable being himself, you know, maybe they're that whole he's he's internalizing a lot of like societal expectations. Like, oh, you can't express male affection because if you do, you're gay, you know, things like that. What advice do you give to a teenager that's going through this kind of male identity crisis right now? Yeah, there is— there is a magical thing about being a student. That it opens every door. There is no good man on the planet. Who, if a 17-year-old boy called him up, and said, 'I'd really love to have coffee with you.

[ 01:12:30,950 ]Could I pick your brain about my life or your life? And just, you know, I'd love to learn. I really admire you. And I would love to just see what your life is like and follow you around or pick your brain or have coffee or whatever it is, whatever you want. There is literally not a man on the planet— Not a good man on the planet— would say no to that kind of request. That's facts. So go do it. Go find men that you admire. And go get them, you know, ask for their help. They will help you. And they will be overjoyed. You will be giving them a gift by giving them the opportunity to help. So please do that. Find people you need.

[ 01:13:18,490 ]The more you have, the more people like that you have, the better off you will be, the taller you will stand. We stand on the shoulders of giants. So go find giants whose shoulders you can stand on. I mean, there is no more. And that door closes the instant you graduate. It's gone. So take advantage of it, man, because. It's there. And you might as well use it. And this is one of the things. You know, you talk about privilege— what do rich people do that poor people don't get to do? And this is one of them. Rich people can set their kids up with internships and, and mentorships and all that they have. They have rich, powerful people that they can call and say, 'Hey, you know, my son is really into being a lawyer and you're a lawyer.

[ 01:14:10,250 ]You don't mind sitting down and they'll do that for their kids because they have access to that. And. That, so, you know, I mean, if there's no one to do that for you, just go do it for yourself. Like literally, there was nobody that would say no to that. Yeah, that's powerful. Thank you for that. I'm going to, I'm stealing that too. It's yours. Thank you. So while I have you, I don't want to take advantage of your time. But while I have you, I do have another question for you in my Facebook group. So I have a podcasting Facebook group where listeners of the show can congregate and share parenting insights, thoughts, opinions, and whatnot. And so one of my most recent posts, it had a little bit of controversy on it, which is totally fine.

[ 01:14:50,890 ]Content creator, I'm all about it, so but anyway, yeah, please, yeah, bring it on, let's go, but anyway, so the question that I posed for the group was: rate this parenting advice on a scale of 1 to 10, like in terms of whether you think it's like excellent advice or not good advice, whatever. Cool. And I say that in quotation marks because it's not really advice, but it is something that people say. And it is boys will be boys. How would you rate that, quote unquote? parenting advice on a scale of one to 10? Is it harmless? Is it just an excuse or does context matter? How do you, how do you rate that? I mean, I think the context probably matters. Um, but you can't excuse inexcusable behavior.

[ 01:15:46,100 ]Yeah, I had a situation. About two weeks ago, my son got sent home from school. And what happened? So my son is seven years old, but he looks like he's 12. He's huge. He's very, very large boy. And he has this friend at school who's a girl and they play and they don't really understand that there's boys and girls yet. I mean, they don't play differently with each other. That much. They do a little bit, but not that much. And he was. He ended up like this. Girl was making him mad and so he ended up like pushing her up against a fence and like kind of menacing her a little bit and and the teacher saw it and um freaked out because here was this enormous boy you know pushing his body against a small girl.

[ 01:16:41,880 ]And. Um, And they ended up calling him into the principal's office and kick him out of school. That day. And, um, The girl actually ended up being traumatized. I happen to be, I'm friends with the girl's dad. And so I texted him and I said, you know. How is this girl feeling about this situation? And he goes, oh, I didn't know anything about it. I'll talk to her. And it turned out that the girl ended up being traumatized, not by what my son did, but because he got in so much trouble for it. And she felt responsible. Oh my god. Which is... Man, what a freaking tragedy this whole thing is, right? I mean, I get it from the standpoint of the teachers. I get it from the standpoint of the girl.

[ 01:17:27,840 ]I get it from the standpoint of my son. I told my son, I said, 'Listen.' Um and we ended up having a really nice day. I put him to work that day, like I had to work, and so I'm like, okay, you're gonna help me work. Here's all the stuff I have to do, like, let's go. And, uh, and. I said to him, I said, listen. It's not fair. I said, but you're... A big boy. And. If you're physical with another kid, especially a girl, that has the potential to freaking people out. And so a girl can come up and do something to you. And if you did it back to her, you would get in trouble and she would not. That's the way of the world. And it's not fair. But it's real. And it's not fair that you have to learn this lesson and figure this out. But I'm sorry, that's the way it is.

[ 01:18:32,630 ]I think that there are contexts under which the boys will be boys, stuff. Boys will be boys. Boys are going to be loud. Boys are going to be, you know, certain ways. There are contexts under which that is helpful, maybe even, or not harmful. But there are certainly contexts under which you can be abused and contexts under which you're just ignoring and excusing behavior that is not excusable. And I think the important thing is. to you know, Give your son the understanding of what it is. To be a good man. And that applies even when he's a boy. He needs to understand. What? The goal is. And that doesn't mean he has to meet the goal. He's not a man. He's a boy.

[ 01:19:33,060 ]And he's allowed to be a boy and he can have fun and he can yell and he can scream and he can take pleasure in all those things. But he needs to understand where the lines are. So I'm not. I don't think I'm a big fan of that term, of that phrase. Because I think it's probably prone to abuse more than it is helpful. Yeah, yeah, definitely. Obviously, I want to be very, very sensitive over what you have personally undergone because that situation that you just described is, it has to be so difficult. Because you're not only worried about your son. worried about if the little girl's okay. You have to maintain this relationship with the family because you're friends, you know, and then you've got the school stuff going on.

[ 01:20:19,810 ]That is a lot. So I want to be very sensitive and respectful to that. But with that being said, do you think that telling a seven-year-old child this is the way the world is, it's not fair? Was the right thing to say? I don't know. Man, I honestly don't know, and I think that's a great question. Um, I don't know. Reason why I ask is because, when you— i'm thinking to myself— and I am certainly not perfect, but if i were If I had encountered a situation like that as a teacher, so I'm not a parent. Yeah. So as a teacher, I can maintain a little bit of emotional distance to any situation that I face because I'm not that child's parent. If I were a child's parent, that could be.

[ 01:21:06,690 ]Different deal. Yeah, it's a totally different ballgame. I can't guarantee that I would have been able to control my reaction. I probably would have gone ballistic. on my child. But with that being said, from a teacher's perspective, if something like that had happened, and I teach high school kids, so it's a little different. But I would have probably... And I can't say this for certain, but hypothetically speaking, I feel like I would have said something like... Do you, do you recognize? how little she is in comparison to you. And do you recognize that even though she made you mad, that that does not give you the right to impose your physical presence on her. and potentially hurt her. Do you see that?

[ 01:21:59,390 ]you know, and I would have maybe gone down— you know, just ask some simple questions and stuff like that— so that he could see, as opposed to saying, and I'm not saying what you did was wrong or incorrect by any stretch of the imagination, but I—I almost just kind of feel that, as a seven-year-old, if you're a seven-year-old child, internalizing that the world is not fair and that girls can do whatever they want to you and you can't do something back to them. It gives me angst. It gives me a little bit of heartbreak. You're 100% right about that. I did say that other thing too. Mm-hmm. Um, And there was another time I really actually struggle with dealing with this kind of problem because, you know, he's so big that people expect him to act.

[ 01:22:50,510 ]The age he looks? Mm-hmm. And so, I mean, even when he was three years old, they're like, 'Why is your six-year-old acting like such a baby?' And it's like, 'Oh, he's three.' Or three or whatever. Yeah. Yeah. And, and, and so that would happen on the playground. And, you know, there was one time. Yours. earlier where he kind of menaced a girl on the playground and I, man, I lit into him. I lit. Hard into it. Thank you. And you know, said you know, like, no people. You make people feel safe. And that girl did not feel safe. And that is not your role in life. is to make people feel safe. And. Um, But I mean, I got mad. And I don't know.

[ 01:23:39,520 ]I do not blame you at all for getting mad. I do not blame you at all for getting mad. Yeah. I i mean I'm scared of what happens if you know he doesn't learn that lesson right and um. Because boys' lives could literally be ruined. Yeah. Especially when they get older. In an instant. Yeah. There's real consequences. Yeah. And yeah, I mean, he's done all sorts of stupid stuff. Part of the reason that he got sent home that day is because there was another boy. That. took his pants down and was showing people his privates. Oh, geez. And so there was a bunch of stuff going on in the school. And my kid got caught up in it. And that kid got sent home too. But it's like.

[ 01:24:23,780 ]you know, I mean, Yeah, I... I don't know if it's the right thing. I don't know. What I do know, this is a great freaking kid. And. the vast majority of our interactions are really positive and I love him to death and he knows it and so All right. I'm doing my best. I got to give myself the grace of recognizing that I'm trying as hard as I can. I'm doing my best. I'm going to get it right some significant portion of the time, but I'm going to get it wrong too sometimes. Yeah, absolutely. I think so many fathers can, can resonate with that. And when you said, you know, give yourself grace, you know, that being one of the main principles that you would want people to just kind of take away from this podcast, you, you clearly are living that moment.

[ 01:25:10,500 ]You are living that moment. At this very moment? Yes. Yeah, like in very real time, you are giving yourself grace for that. And I think that's a beautiful example for people to see that they're not always going to get it right. I don't always get it right either. I had to, I, you know, sometimes I have to apologize to kids too, because I will overreact and I'll say the wrong thing. And I can't imagine what it's like being a teacher of high school. It's, it's wild. But so, anyway, um, I wanted to just kind of. Comment on this one thing and then I'll ask you the final question and then we'll we'll wrap it up. But so Cassie, there's a lady who's coming on my podcast.

[ 01:25:44,830 ]She uh, in one of the future episodes, as far as the boys will be, advice she wrote this. She said it has a way of excusing behavior we should actually be correcting, which is similar to sort of what you said. And sends boys the message that roughness or insensitivity is just built into the experience. Boy, so that's a really insightful comment. I love that. I love that way of putting it. Mm-hmm. But I would push on that a little bit. So first of all, I agree with that first. Part of that. I mean, I said the same thing. But I think that roughness is a little bit part of the experience. Yeah. And... This is the challenge. This is the challenge of modern masculinity. Which is how do you channel?

[ 01:26:33,780 ]That. That. That, um, uh, that desire, right? Yeah, that instinct, yeah, to be rough and to wrestle and to be loud and to be a boy in this, in the boys will be boys sense, how do you channel that to productive purposes? Yeah. And win. Right? Like, he's seven. He's going to run around and yell and do all that stuff. We've got to give them the outlet to do that. Um, But. We have to channel that energy, eventually also. And, um, I had a guest on my podcast named Steve Biddulph. Steve Biddulph made, uh, wrote, uh, um— in the 90s, he wrote a book that was basically it's called it's called 'Raising Boys' and it was the seminal work at the time of people, and it actually it so.

[ 01:27:37,640 ]He was in the UK when he wrote it. And so it was very popular book in the UK and in the Commonwealth territories. And so, UK, Australia, all that. And he got, um, school administrators would like corner him and be like, 'Man, your book caused us so much trouble because one of the things that he mentioned was that he thought that boys should start school a year later than they do.' Mm-hmm. And so he recommended just keeping your kid, keeping your boy out of school. And and so there was a whole year where people, when that book came out, there were no boys at school that year right because all these all these parents were doing what he advised. And... I'll tell you. My son? Is a January baby.

[ 01:28:28,650 ]And so he's a little bit later in the school year. He's older than a lot of the kids. In his same grade. He's also way bigger than a lot of the kids in the same grade. And I think he would have benefited if we would have kept him out of school for a whole other year. In terms of his relative maturity to the girls in his class. And. You know, when I was a kid, I was. I was very smart. And I really prided myself on being smart. And I started skipping grades when I was in second grade. And, uh, and so I was a September baby and I was in a, in a, in a grade, I was in the higher grade.

[ 01:29:09,310 ]And then I started and I skipped second grade and went to third grade and I skipped third grade and went to fourth grade. And I felt so proud of all that. And so, while academically I was at that higher level, emotionally I was not, and again I was a big kid too. So, all right. Really got challenged by the fact that I was so comparatively immature. And it stymied me in a lot of ways. And then I ended up going to this private school when I was in eighth grade, going to ninth grade. And... They kept me back. And so I repeated eighth grade. And it made all the difference. And it made all the difference. And I wish that I had done that.

[ 01:29:57,570 ]I wish that I'd been held back when I was in kindergarten. And then that would have been easier. Or that we would have figured out a way. To do, um, to do like the academic side and let me stretch my legs academically without having to do it emotionally. Yeah. I cannot tell you how much I appreciate you coming on the show today and sharing your insights. It's incredible. And I want to thank you very much for all the wonderful examples, the vulnerability and the opinions that you've shared, because it's refreshing. And I do not hear these types of things very often. Do I see these things very often? So, just from a personal perspective, thank you for what you do. Um, the next thing, the last two questions I have, this is question. That I always ask every guest that comes on the show, and you can interpret it however you wish. The question is, what do you think is the most important education that a child could ever receive? Man, that's also a great question. Let me think about it for a moment. Sure.

[ 01:31:21,670 ]You know, I think maybe the most important lesson to learn is...

[ 01:31:32,370 ]is really about... Self-esteem. And. So. You got to nail it down. Like, what does that mean? And it means... It means that you believe. that you're capable. of surmounting life's challenges. and that you're worthy of. the rewards that come from doing so. And very few people have even one of those things, let alone both of them. And it's about loving yourself. It's about knowing your worth. It's about... knowing your capabilities and being proud of them, but also knowing your limitations and being aware of them. And so. I think the most important lesson is to learn how to cultivate that sense of self-esteem, self-efficacy, and self-worth. Yep, definitely. It all links back to the self-image. Absolutely. The image that they have of themselves. So where can we find you?

[ 01:32:45,620 ]Yeah, so our website is raising . men. The podcast is called Raising Men. And we're on YouTube and Instagram and all the places. All the places where you can download podcasts. Please check it out. Let me know what you think. Get a hold of me. I love to hear from people. I love... to to to interact and man i mean i'm just here trying to figure it out just like everybody else and um and and boy you know let's uh let's figure this stuff out together and let's uh let's go Let's go create a generation of really, really excellent men. Yeah. Did it feel weird to get interviewed today rather than being the person interviewing? A little bit. A little bit not too bad, though. You know... It's a discussion. It's an authentic discussion. Man, I thrive on that. I, you know, my whole professional career was spent doing. What was spent doing that kind of thing. And, uh, and so now I get to do it in a different venue. Yeah. Well, we're happy to have you on The Gentle Year. Thank you so much, Sean. And we will talk again soon. It's been a real pleasure.