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The 1000 Hours Outside Podcast
1KHO 430: The Father Factor: Why Dads Are More Essential Than We Ever Knew | Warren Farrell, The Boy Crisis
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- [00:01]
Ginny Urich
Before we hop into today's episode, I have to ask, when was the last time you had a night out just for fun? No laundry, no dishes, no answering a million questions. Just you out with friends or out with your spouse laughing until your stomach hurts. If it's been too long, here is your chance. The 1000 hours outside really very crunchy tour is coming to Michigan, Georgia, Tennessee and Ohio this February. This is your personal invitation to a night of comedy, music, encouragement and community. Bring your best friend, your spouse, or even make it a girls night because you deserve of something to look forward to. Tickets are $5 off with the code podcast and if you bring a group of four, you can grab all your tickets for just $80 total. That's only 20 bucks a ticket. Go to 1000hours outside.com tour and get your tickets now. You are going to love this night.
- [00:49]
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- [01:03]
Dr. Warren Farrell
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- [01:06]
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- [01:19]
Ginny Urich
Welcome to the 1000 Hours Outside podcast. My name is Ginny Urich. I'm the founder of 1000 Hours Outside. And recently I had someone recommend a book. It's called the Boy Crisis. The subtitle is why Our Boys are Struggling and what We Can Do About It. And it is, it is a long and meaty read and it changed my life. It changed like my whole perspective on things. There were things in this book that I never considered, never thought of, never heard anyone else talk about ever. And then there is a, almost kind of like a follow up book but different. It's about marriage. It's called Role Mate to Soulmate, the seven Secrets to Lifelong Love. I read that one as well. And amazingly the author of both is here with us today. Dr. Warren Farrell. Welcome.
- [02:03]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Thank you. It is such a pleasure to hear your experience with that and, and the sparkle in your eyes as you're talking. It's really nice.
- [02:10]
Ginny Urich
The man who introduced me to your books is named Andrew Pudua and he has this writing curriculum and he always is reading and knows new things. So if he ever suggests anything, I, I, I always want to check it out. And so the book the Boy Crisis. It's long. It's, you know, 400 pages. And I don't know what I expected. I mean, I think I'm expecting kids are having to sit too long in school and, wow, Warren, you are talking about things that I had never heard anyone talk about. Dad deprivation and just the. The statistics on the importance of dads. I guess what changed for me, Warren, is like, marriage can be hard, and really, I think. Right. All right. As an understatement and as a woman. This is what you're talking about. Women now have all these options. And I've sort of thought, well, I could probably support myself or I could probably support myself and my kids. And it almost feels like there's this culture that dads can be a throwaway.
- [03:07]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. Yes.
- [03:08]
Ginny Urich
I've internalized that a little bit.
- [03:10]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes.
- [03:10]
Ginny Urich
And I read your book, and I was like, this will change me forever. Because it's about how important dads are to the lives of their children and to the stabilization of our culture and our community. I would love to start here about this. I never thought of this, that when men go off to work, they're learning different skill sets, and it's changing them in ways. I was like. It made me so much more empathetic, Warren. I mean, this book, I was like, wow, okay. The catch 22 of your son as a hero is the more that he becomes a hero, the less likely he is to be a hero as a husband. The qualities it takes for your son or for your husband to kill it at work, to be successful at work, they make him less lovable at home. The qualities they undermine what takes for him to be successful in love. So I have never heard this. Can we start there? What's going on for men? It's hard.
- [04:06]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. First of all, I really love that you were talking about the things that are unique in the book. I don't write a book until I feel there's a problem in the culture and that I have something to add to help solve that. And so this is one of those things. And the. What I. This is what. When children are born, oftentimes the dad experiences what I would call the father's catch 22. And he learns to love his family by being away from the love of his family. But more subtly, the qualities he or an executive woman learns to do to be successful at work are intention. That's an intention with the qualities that it takes to be successful in love. And here's an example that. Let's say you're a CEO at Boeing Aircraft and you're, you're wanting a new door and you're interviewing 15 salespeople who are, you know, potentially going to be proposing a new door for you. But you have to say, okay, does this salesperson have the answer to the things that made the last door be a problem? How does this connect with the Japanese infrastructure that is producing some of those doors? And how does it connect with what's happening in China and what Trump will be doing in China? And so all of these things that you, while you're listening to these different, these eight or nine salespeople, it's functional for you to be self listening, that is, listening to yourself create questions that you need to ask that salesperson to verify the validity of what they're saying. That's functional for success at work. And again, this is both for males and females who are executives. You tend to sort of train, train your brain to connect neurons that think this way. And then you come home to your spouse or your children and your spouse has a, you know, you say, how, sweetie? How's your, you know, day at work? And your spouse, you know, has some problems and you're thinking about, all right, here's what I can, here's what you can do to solve those problems. And particularly if you're a male. And this is really important for women to know. If you have a husband who's successful at work, he is the type of man, almost invariably, who, when you are expressing a problem, his experience of that is that you are bleeding and he loves you with all his heart. He would die so that you would live. And so if you're bleeding, it's his responsibility to put a band aid over that blood and stop it immediately, because this is the way I save the one I love. But you, what you really need and want, like anybody who's talking and expressing problem needs and wants, is you want to be heard first. And you don't really want to have somebody solve your problem right away, because the subtle message of solving your partner's problem right away is that I can figure out the answer to your problem in one minute that you couldn't figure out the answer to in your entire life. So it's a bit condescending. And the experience of having that your problem solved that quickly that way really doesn't feel, on the one hand, you feel grateful. On the other hand, you feel, like, criticized without knowing it. And so it's so important for people who are successful at work to understand that when their partner expresses a problem or when their children express A problem and say, dad, you have this problem in math that you know at work and you go, well, here's the way you do it, sweetie, and boom, boom, boom. And the first thing that is needed is just to hear the, you know, the challenge that that problem must be how the child must feel. Maybe the child doesn't feel as competent or as intelligent as other kids in the school that get it faster. And you have to be there for that of emotional experience of that that's what makes you successful in love. But let's say you're an attorney and every. If you start thinking about, oh, I hadn't thought of that way that the, the other person's attorney was talking about, let me see if I can express to that attorney what I heard you say. And to make sure I didn't distort anything and I'd make sure I didn't miss anything. And you are a great sweetheart of an attorney. But your client fires you because you've helped the other attorney express his or her ca more effectively and you've allowed the jury or the judge to, to empathize with their way of looking at something. But you take that process at home and the second your wife or your children have a problem, you begin to self listen and say, all right, what's wrong with that? How can I chop it apart? Or as an attorney, your job is to distort what the other person says and then criticize it in the process of doing that. Which is one of the reasons attorneys have the highest rate of divorce of any white collar profession.
- [08:47]
Ginny Urich
Wow. I have never in my life heard about any of this. And it made me a lot more empathetic for my husband, who has for a very long time. We have five kids, Warren. So he was supporting a family of seven. And the skill sets that he needs in order to do that are often at odds with the skill sets that he needs at home. You had written this filing for divorce. You're often filing for a divorce from a different man. When you talk about how women are the ones that the majority are, it's like 69% or something. It's the women who are filing for divorce. And there's no empathy or understanding that as he's going out into the world to do this wonderful thing. You even have this thing about how it's very common for maybe kids to say something like, mom, thanks for cooking dinner, but they're not going to say, dad, thanks for working to pay for the groceries that went into paying for dinner. And this will change my Life Forever. The Boy Crisis is the best marriage book I've ever read, actually. And then it led me to read Romate to Soulmate, which I think is fantastic too. They really complement each other very well. And the point that dads are not dispensable. Another thing that you talked about that I never considered is that we are in an era of the multi option woman. But the no option man, you use the phrase, oh, I. I was like, this is brilliant. There's a glass ceiling in the home. A glass ceiling in the home for dads. Can you talk about this era that we're in?
- [10:14]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. So when a husband and wife are about, you know, learn that the mom is pregnant and. And in a sense, you're both pregnant and you have a dinner party and. And the. Your friends say, oh, well, you know, Jenny, what are you planning to do? And you think to yourself, well, you know, I love the podcast. I do. And so maybe I'll continue doing that. Or maybe you say, no, this is the time for my kids. So option one is that you continue working full time, but maybe you cut back a little bit. Option two is that you are full time with the children. And option three is some combination of both. You work part time. And the data on that is that 40% of women work full time when they have young children. 40% are home full time, and 20% work part time. Among the ones that work full time, they usually cut their hours back. So they. If they. If they were, let's say, commuting to a big city, they might stop commuting to the big big city and work some version of their business more locally so they can be home sooner. So the woman who is pregnant and working full time and becomes a mom who works full time is usually working close to about 36 hours a week, whereas she might before have worked 40 to 45 hours a week. So option one is work full time. Option two is children full time. Option three is work part time. The man, you know also says not to be, you know, undone. He goes, I have three options two. Option one is I can work full time. Option two is I can work full time. Option three is I can work full time. Or if he's a workingclass man, work two jobs. Or if he's a executive man, you know, work harder, more hours full time to compensate. So one of the things I've started some 300 men's groups and 250 women's groups, and I listened to the, you know, phone calls afterwards where they talk about what, you know, what's happening with them? And so many of the men's groups revealed to me that there was, I remember one man in one of my men's groups, he was a full time teacher and he loved teaching and he was an elementary school teacher and there's hardly very few men elementary school teachers. So he felt he had a unique place and the kids loved him, they came up and hugged him and, and the boys, oftentimes that didn't have dads really attached to him and he, there's nothing that made him happier. But when this was before, he had his own child. But then when he had his own child, he realized that as an elementary school teacher he didn't make enough money to support both his wife, his, the new child and so on. And they were thinking about having more children after that. And so he, one of the things he hated was administration. But he gave up doing what he loved to do in order to do what he felt he needed to do to earn twice, three times as much money as a principal. And then he became a superintendent did in schools. And he hated his work compared to, you know, what he did as a elementary school teacher. But he gave up doing what he wanted to do, to do what he needed to do so that his children would have opportunities that he didn't have. And they would have those opportunities by being able to afford a better home and a better neighborhood that had better school systems, he felt, and that would give his daughter those opportunities that he didn't have. And then of course, when he had more children, that was even more pressure in that direction. And so at that time I was on the board of directors of the National Organization for Women in New York City and speaking all around the world on the importance of feminist issues. And one of the things we pointed out was that even in female dominated professions like education where most of the teachers are women, look at what's happening. The principals and the superintendents of schools are men. That just goes to show you that men try to control. Women have all the power and they have all the privilege. And these guys were saying to me, power and privilege. It just doesn't really compute for me because I really gave up what I wanted to do for what I needed to do in order to support the family. And I saw this with musicians and artists and writers and actors. You know, most actors in Los Angeles have the same name. It's waiter. They, you know, they're hoping to become this, you know, this actor. But if they, if they have children, they usually have to give up these Things that are their passion for things that they like to do less, that will give their children opportunities. And most men don't mind this. They see this as I'm needed and I'm contributing. But when we as feminists called it male power and male privilege and downgraded it as us taking advantage of women, we felt very not understood. But men, when we don't feel understood, we keep our feelings to ourselves because we are afraid that if we express them to our wives, they'll think less of us and not maybe respect us. Now, that may or may not be true, but the fear that men have of expressing vulnerabilities and complaints to our wives is that they'll lose respect for us. And every man intuitively knows that if a woman doesn't respect him, she doesn't love him because she can't love somebody she doesn't respect. And so these are some of the dilemmas I discovered among men. And then when I started writing books that were empathetic to men, instead of writing books that were just empathetic to women, instead of looking at men as part of the patriarchy that creates rules to benefit men at the expense of women, I lost popularity among the feminist, my feminist friends. And that was really, you know, very challenging because I valued my friendships and lost those friendships and my speaking engagements were completely feminist dependent and lost all of those. And so it was a huge financial loss and a huge heart loss as well.
- [16:17]
Ginny Urich
But what you're sharing is truth. And it's so important, I think it's important as women for us to step back and to consider, hey, yeah, I had a lot of choice. I had all those choices and my husband did not have the same. And even with the way that things are viewed, you had this sentence that said, if a man chooses to stay home with the kids, you wrote, my unemployed husband is similar to saying my unattractive wife. Yeah, I was like, oh, that's really deep. So what choices do these men really have? And it does just give you a lot of empathy. You even talked about how we're pushing girls into steam. There's all these extra programs, but there's nothing comparable to push men into these more like nursing roles or education teachers. Hygienist, I guess. I, I never considered it. I never thought about it. I never heard of it. Warren?
- [17:10]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. No, it's really, it's really sad. You know, you, when you go to a massage therapist or a dental hygienist, you know, for a while there was a point in time when considerable number of Men were being hired, were training to be dental hygienists and then they couldn't find jobs. And so slowly they stopped doing that. They couldn't find jobs because when a woman puts her hand in a man's mouth, the man kind of likes it. But when a man puts his hand in a woman's mouth, she may have much more mixed feelings about it. And so dental hygienists were seeing the dentists themselves that were hiring. The hygienists were seeing this. And so ultimately, no dentist, almost no dentist hired male dental hygienists. And so, and with male massage therapists, the same type of thing is true that women don't mind being massaged by women, as some women like being massaged by men, but a fairly high percentage would prefer massage by a woman, and pretty much 100% of heterosexual men would prefer being massaged by a woman. And, and many do not prefer being massaged by a man. And so there's so many professions like this that we don't look at in terms of understanding. You know, a man who wants to be that elementary school teacher like I was talking about about before, oftentimes there's fears that, well, you know, he, maybe he wants to be a nursery school teacher and do I want my, or first, second, third grade teacher and suppose there's a picture taken of my child sitting on his lap, you know, do I have mixed feelings about this? What's the background of this man? Is there something more than just my child sitting on his lap? And, and so the, the school system in terms of, you know, watching out for loss, lawsuits and so on on has to be considerate of, you know, do we risk the higher possibility of just one parent having that feeling? Maybe because she had a bad experience with somebody touching her and that bad experience is a, is a PTSD for her. And she sort of very innocently sort of reports suspicion of that, or would you please check this man out? And then the fear of a law school suit by the school, you know, emanates from that. And so those are a few things that we often don't think about.
- [19:30]
Ginny Urich
Yeah, I don't think about at all. Because one of the things you say is, and this is something that we talk about on the show actually quite a bit because the world has changed. It used to be a place where you would get a 30 year career and you would retire. And now we're parenting for flexibility. That's the word you use, not stability. We're parenting for flexibility. And so we need for our kids to be able to do different types of things if they need to do that. You're talking about vocational education. But, you know, one of the things you said is, you know, like, would we recommend our son as a babysitter? And I was like, I wouldn't do that. I don't think I would. You know, and I never thought about it, but you're kind of like, oh, it feels a little bit too risky. But you say the goal is to expand options and this is a really important thing. So we're, we're not only talking about, like empathy for our spouse, but also for me, it was like, okay, I need to make sure that I'm leading our sons and daughters. They need to know about this stuff too. How do I lead them into their adult life? We're kind of on the cusp with some of our kids.
- [20:29]
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- [21:45]
Dr. Warren Farrell
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- [21:50]
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- [23:16]
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- [23:43]
Ginny Urich
There is so much in this book. We're not going to have time to hit all of it. Obviously. I just want to throw out a couple as I go through my pages of notes here. You're Talking about the NEETs not in education, employment or training. This is on the rise. Boys are declining in a dramatic way in virtually every metric. You're talking about the sperm crisis and the ramifications of the average sperm count in the US continues to drop 1.5% every single year. Boys today have sperm counts less than half of what their grandfathers had at the same age. IQ is dropping. You talk about emotional intelligence. I'm just wanting for people like you. Got to read the book. There is so much in here. But I really want to make sure that we talk about dad deprivation because, well, you know what I got out of this so much, Warren, is that like dads really care about their Kids and that is not necessarily the messaging that we hear. It's like, you know, they, they want, you know, they go these custody battles, they're like crushed. They want to be with their kids and it's important that they're roughhousing and, and playing in these certain ways. So can you talk about the effects? I mean it was down to the telomeres, which that has to do with like your length of life.
- [24:48]
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- [24:48]
Ginny Urich
And, and longevity. So you say beginning prior to conception, can you convince us that dads matter?
- [24:56]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. So let me give a bigger picture here first. So I think for me, one of the most important chapters in the boy crisis is the chapters on how the differences between dad style parenting and mom style parenting and why children who have both mom and dad style parenting, especially when the mother and father can understand and value each other's inherent style. Now I want to make it clear that sometimes dad style parenting is what moms and sometimes mom style parenting is what dads do. So these are not 100%, but these are the patterns. And so let's say you have three children and dad is sort of saying, okay kids, you know, get on the couch and the three of you jump on my back. And, and here's the game. Either you pin me down before I pin you down or I win because I pin all three of you down before you, you can pin me down. Okay, Dad, I love it. And you know, mom is looking on and she's going, going, oh my God, I feel like I have just one more child to monitor. And but on the other hand, the mom is saying to herself, well, I don't, you know, the kids seem like they're having fun. I don't want to interfere. You know, that's not right. Let dad have his time with the kids. But I just fear that one soon, sooner or later somebody's going to get hurt. And she's only about 99 likely to be right. And so, and so eventually as they do this and they're all excited, somebody sticks their, their, their arm, let's say, in their sister or brother's face. And the sister or brother start to cry. And so mom goes, I knew it. Now mom's feeling guilty because she had didn't interfere and prevent this from happening. Was one of her kids got hurt and she just knew that was going to happen. And so, but now she says, all right, at least she consoled herself with the fact that maybe be dad is going to now learn his lesson. And, but now dad doesn't learn his lesson. He Says, you know, you know, Jimmy, you can't stick your elbow in Jane's eye again like that or we'll stop the rough housing. Okay? Yeah, okay, well, no, no, no problem. Sorry about that. And so they, they go back to the rough housing and mom's going like, wow, he didn't learn his lesson. And then the rough housing ends up in the dad once, the kid, one of the kids crying again. And mom says, all right, at least this time, stop the rough housing. But no, dad says, okay, no more rough housing until Wednesday or Thursday. If you have, if you've been doing all your homework and everything gets done really well, we can continue then. But once again, if you on roughhouse on Wednesday and Thursday and anyone does this aggressiveness will stop the roughhousing and we will do it for at least a week. Oh, okay, dad. Now the payoff that nobody understands is that it's the, it's that next time that dad does the roughhousing and says, remember last time we stopped the rough housing the moment you, somebody got too aggressive. Now the kids are thinking to themselves, if I get too aggressive like I did last time, I will lose the treat, the roughhousing. So that roughhousing is to a child what a, you know, a special treat is to a puppy. The puppy obeys because it knows it's going to lose that treat if it doesn't obey. And now the kids are saying, I'm push my brother or sister aside. Now, now that's immediate gratification. But if I do that immediate gratification, I won't get what I really want from postponed gratification, which is the rough housing. So what are the kids learning? They're learning and this is the data that comes with rough housing that children who rough house with their dad under these types of boundary enforcement. Notice that this is not just boundary setting, but boundary enforcement. A huge difference. Moms are more likely to set boundaries. Dads are more likely to enforce the boundaries that they set. The problem with that from the mom's perspective is that they set the boundaries. And then when something goes wrong, the mom will often say something like, I remember I told you you shouldn't. You can't be aggressive like that. So you really important you remember that. And then, but the kids get it. But ah, we can manipulate our way around mom and get another chance. Whereas dads what they are more likely to do. And again, sometimes this is reversed. What dads are more likely to do is just plan at that point end the roughhousing, which forces a number of things. First, it forces postpone gratification. And postpone gratification is the single most important predictor of success or failure in life. And then two, it stimulates empathy. That is, children do not become empathetic because it's biologically natural. It's biologically natural to be self centered. However, when you are losing what you want, the rough housing, because you weren't able to think of anyone else's needs but yours, and you weren't able to think that I can't stick my elbow in my sister's eye because that will hurt her. Now you're forced to become thoughtful about someone else's feelings besides yours, which is the first stepping stone to empathy. Children who do roughhousing with the conditions of boundary enforcement, they are much more likely to be empathetic than children that don't. So now you can imagine a dad going up to a mom and saying, you know, I'd love to, you know, roughhouse with the kids because, because this will help them be empathetic. And the mom goes, what? You must be blankety blank kidding. And the dad would never say that because, you know, one of the reasons I felt it's so important to write the Boy Crisis book was because I was discovering by deep research things that I didn't see in any parenting magazine and in any parenting books or magazines. So I can't blame the dads for not saying these things and I can't blame the moms for not hearing them because moms can't hear what dads don't say say, and dads can't say what they can't read in the culture. And so this is just two outcomes, the positive outcomes of things like roughhousing. So in the Boy Crisis book, I talk about seven major areas like this, like teasing, like risk, the encouragement of risk taking, and, and how the mom's point of view is oftentimes never heard by the dad and the dad's point of view never heard by the moment. And how both points of view can be heard, how compromises can be worked out. And so instead of having just dad style parenting or mom style parenting that you can develop with your partner, checks and balance parenting.
- [31:46]
Ginny Urich
It's interesting because we talk a lot about, you know, kids are biologically designed to self educate. And what you're saying is this, is this dad brain. This is for the most part how dads become when they become parents, if they're involved parents. You wrote, when a dad is hands on, his neurological and hormonal systems adapt to his New role. So it made me think like my dad, he used to play this game called lion and he would get home from work and he would, he would crawl around on all fours in the living room and we would just jump all over him. And it was like one of our favorite things. But nobody had any idea. Of course, my mom wasn't doing that and I don't do that. We had no idea that there were benefits here. And what you say is that there is this like trifecta, the holy trinity of gifts that you're playing games, there's boundary enforcement, you're learning some self control and postpone gratification. And that during roughhousing, dads and kids are typically 100. Energized, laughing, spontaneous, silly. And these are important things that we're missing today for our kids. Hence the name of the book, which is Boy Crisis. You also have a lot of other books and. But one of the ones was Women can't hear what Men can't say. You kind of just said that statement. So that's another book as well. There's so many books to learn from. And so this is really important. You go through the statistics. It was something like 70 ways children benefit. 70 ways children benefit from significant father involvement. 90% of runaway and homeless youth are from fatherless homes. 80% of rapists come from father absent homes. 71% of high school dropouts have no father involvement or minimal. 85% of youths in prison grow up in a fatherless home. These are huge numbers.
- [33:36]
Dr. Warren Farrell
They really are. I saw this in the prison population when I ran for governor of California against Schwarzenegger and in the recall election. And I started speaking around at some prisons and talking about what the importance of dads. And I had prisoners come up to me and say, Dr. Farrell, can I speak with you privately for a moment? And these guys were, you know, they had muscles like I will never have tattoos. And there are just tears rolling down their eyes. And they said, I thought I deserved to spend my whole life in prison. I was, that I was a useless person. And you're now helping me see that I have lots of value, I can really contribute and I can help my children not do things that I did to get in prison. And I want to get out of this prison as fast as possible and do all sorts of things that I can to do that so I can get back before my children get too old so that I'm. That I'm useless. And this really, I, I could see, you know, I would hear people say, well, you know, my husband's no good. He's in prison. Well, that might be the case, but it also might not be the case. What I have seen over and over again is that every generation has its war. And in every generation, when we had that war, we said to men, you're needed. And when men are told that they're needed, they are willing to be killed in order to be served or even kill, which is just almost as traumatizing to men as anything short of being killed. And, and the, that's what creates the ptsd. And so men are willing to kill and be killed. And we are now saying, men, we don't. We need many fewer of you to kill and be killed. But what we need is many more of you to love and be loved. And if we tell men that we know why they are needed so they see it's not just a general overall statement, but that they are really needed, we will find men that have dropped out of the family, especially after divorce, to really want to be involved in the family. And the important thing is that men need to know. The dads need to know that the mom understands what he brings that is needed.
- [35:57]
Ginny Urich
And that's what you'll learn in this book, the boy crisis you wrote. Dads, like mom's air and water, are essential to our lives. But we've tried to live without dads. We haven't tried to live without mom's air or water. And I think this partially comes back to the judicial system where moms are often getting custody or more custody than the dad. You say a mom has a right to the children, but the dad has to fight for that custody. And then you just go on. I mean, the statistics are jaw dropping. Dad deprivation is the leading cause of more than 25 social, psychological, academic and physical health problems. Both girls and boys without dad suffer, but dad deprivation has an even more negative impact on boys. And it's also longer lasting. It's just thing after thing. And it's such a valuable thing to know. I mean, as silly as that sounds, I didn't know. I didn't know. And that's why I said, this book will be so life changing for me. It already is. And it's such a huge problem because one out of three children in the US live in fatherless homes. For the first time in US History, more than half of children born to mothers under 30 were born outside of marriage. So this is not an insignificant thing that we are dealing with. And it's important to know about all of these different statistics. 80% of preschool children who are admitted as psychiatric patients come from homes without fathers. And you're right, it's a crisis with a solution. Involve the dads. Involve the dads.
- [37:28]
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- [38:30]
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- [38:59]
Ginny Urich
Do talk a lot about what to do if there is divorce and the important things to make sure that you know that there's equal time with dad, that dads are an important part of the kid's life. And you wrote about how when a dad disappears, a son disappears. This would be like, everyone read this book. I mean, my goodness. But then you also talk about psychological divorce. I've never heard of any of this. So okay, okay. So sometimes we say, well, I'm just going to stick it out for the sake of the kids. This is psychological divorce. And you're like, that's not great either. And that's why the Romate to Soulmate book is a phenomenal follow up. Because you're like, okay, I'm Convinced in some, in some homes there's abuse or different things, but in our home it's more annoyances or whatever. So I'm like, okay, I'm convinced. And you wrote it's biologically natural to fall in love, but sustaining love is not biologically natural.
- [39:55]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes.
- [39:56]
Ginny Urich
And so you wrote the solution is not to make divorce harder, but to make marriages better.
- [40:03]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes.
- [40:04]
Ginny Urich
What are the four Cs you talk about? The four Cs? This is enrollment to Soulmate that are love depleters.
- [40:11]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes. So let me give the bigger picture here first. Historically speaking and biologically speaking, if you heard, if you heard a criticism, it was a potential enemy. And so in order to survive, it made sense to get up your defenses or even kill the enemy before the enemy kills you. And that was functional for survival. It's just dysfunctional for love. But we're all the offsprings of. We are all the offspring of the people who learned to survive by building up defenses effectively. When I started doing the Role mate to SoulMate workshops from 30 years ago, I started seeing that there were about 20 some odd loved of enhancements that I needed to work on. But the single biggest one by a long shot was that that couples I would mention in the workshop, it's important to not be defensive in response to criticism. And everybody would agree, that's very good, Warren. But then I would do follow up phone calls with a free follow up group phone calls with everybody that went through the workshops. And so about a month later I said, you know, how many people found, found that they didn't become defensive in response to criticism? And about 0% raised their hand. So what I saw was that when criticism appears, wisdom disappears. That it wasn't that even reading a book is not good enough to cancel out the, the propensity to be defensive. So I started developing practices that I, that I developed in the workshop and then making sure that those practices were continued outside of the home. So in the Boy Crisis book, there's a QR code to get a almost free online video course because the online video course is something you and your partner can do together. And this, by the way, is as functional as this, this problem it's about. No one feels really heard by their partner. And so no matter what type of relationship you're in, I found that couples were walking, often walking on eggshells, wanting to say something, but fearful that if they did say something, the response would be defensiveness. Then that they would become experience that defensiveness as criticism of them, which it usually was. And that that it would escalate. So therefore, maybe I just better keep my feelings to myself rather than say something about them. And so the first job that I had enrolled me to, solemn and doing this as a book and book form, was teaching people how to practice being able to hear their partner. And the way to do that is I've ultimately found, to make a long story short was I found that nobody can handle that criticism just naturally. So therefore, I would ask people to meditate into it to alter their natural biological state before they heard their partner's criticism of them. So this step one, before they heard their partner's criticism, criticism of them is your partner gives you two very specific appreciations. And so I educate and work with couples to know how to give appreciations at five levels of specificity. So your partner feels really seen and loved by you and you've. And before you hear their, their criticism. Second, before you hear your partner's criticism or what they would call a concern and what you would call a criticism is you, you read out loud to your partner these six mindsets. So I'll give you an example. One mindset is the. What I call the love guarantee. And so the love guarantee goes like this. If I provide a safe environment for you to say whatever you want in whatever tone of voice you want, no matter how much I disagree with that version, you will feel if I provide a safe environment for that, that even if you're sarcastic, you will feel more secure to not feel like you're doing something wrong in what you're saying while I'm talking, but you will just that you will be feeling more secure with me. Then you'll feel more loved by me, and therefore you'll also love me more. And so you sort of meditate into that. And then you take my meditation and you say it in your own words so that your partner sees that it's really in your words. And then I have the partners in the workshop do something like I have them sit back to back and they each get a piece of paper that they are told that they're going to write answers to this question down and then they're going to wrinkle up those that piece of paper and their partner will never see their answer to this question. Here's the question. I say that if, pretend that you were in a situation like by a river and your partner was about to drown or in a car and your partner was about to be killed, and you knew with a hundred percent likelihood that they would be killed, but you also knew with a hundred percent likelihood that you could save their life, but you would have to. You'd have a 50% risk of losing your own life in the process. So you have to answer on the piece of paper, would you do it? Yes, no uncertain. And the one caveat is that make believe children are not involved in your life. This is just you and your partner. So yes, no uncertain. Are you willing to take a 50 chance of losing your life in order to have a hundred percent opportunity to save your partner's life? A little bit over 90% of the men say they would do this. A little bit over 80% of the women say they would do this. Usually don't think as women as being as likely to do that. But about 80, a little bit less likely, but about 80% do feel that. So then the first meditation that they do before they hear their partner's criticism is to say, well, if I'm willing to die for you, maybe I'm willing to listen to you. It's a little bit easier to do that. And so that's part of, you know that and four other meditations move you into having an alternative mindset to be able to hear what criticism, which is biologically unnatural to do without altering that biologically natural space into a space where you are saying, huh? If my wife or husband is exaggerating and using a tone of voice, they will normally associate that with me becoming defensive. So the more they exaggerate, the more they have a negative tone of voice and I still am there for them, the greater the opportunity it is to be more deeply loved. And so they're now beginning to associate even a negatively given criticism with an opportunity to be more deeply loved as opposed to be more thoroughly rejected.
- [47:42]
Ginny Urich
Like all the other things. I'd never heard of this, and it is our biggest marital problem is the response to criticism. And I've gotten so much out of this and even more than that, like just been really motivated to fix things or to try and figure it out because the dads matter so much. And I also was encouraged. You had this long list of decisions you have to make when you get married. And it's so long, it's like, how are you? Are you going to spend your money on vacations? How much are you going to save? I mean the list is so long. How are you going to parent? I was like, maybe we're doing better than we thought. You know, you had this whole list there. It is hard. There's all of these things you have to come to terms with. And I thought, well, yeah, we figured actually out a lot of these things and our biggest one is this criticism piece which is a really quick, I mean example would be my husband was taking our, our girls, we've got five kids but the little girls, they had to go get retake their school pictures. We do this homeschool co op and our, our youngest one, she's not a big fan of jeans. I don't know, this is like a thing now and it's only going to be a picture of her face. And so she didn't want to wear jeans and he thought she should wear jeans and I didn't think she should wear jeans. I'm like, it doesn't matter, it's just a picture of her face. And, and it became a huge thing and I was like, okay. It's because of the criticism and the defensiveness of our decisions. And so we're already talking about this as a marriage. We're going to do your course. The cute. Like you said, the QR code is in there so it's really easy to find. This is a 400 plus page book. There is way, way more than we've talked about. And we didn't really get into this whole ADHD piece and dopamine function. You talk about you have adhd, the brains are actually different but that we are over medicating and there are all sorts of factors here including. So these are things parents need to read, I guess. I was so enthralled, I was like, wow, this book has. It was just page after page was like the next thing it was like, the fevers are good. Fevers help restore normal brain function. So you should know about Tylenol and acetaminophen and you talk about hot water therapy and heat shock proteins and sugar and pasteurized dairy and a sedentary lifestyle which is really applicable to this conversation. Movement, chronic stress. It in inhibits glutathione. But video games, induced labor. 67% of mothers who are given Pitocin, their kids have ADHD. Antibiotics, GMOs, plastics, food intolerances. I was like, okay, that's there. We're running out of time. Okay, so that's all in there. Family dinners, the importance of complex movements. Pick up sports, environmental toxins. I mean it just goes on and on and on and on. The sunshine vitamin. It's all in here. So if we were to pick one last topic, I guess I want to say that the solutions are in here too. So at the very end of my notes I have this whole section on practical solutions. Which includes family dinner night, not family dinner nightmare. You wrote physical activity, exercise, increased recess, challenging movements, and getting outside art class. There is a lot in here. There's a movie list. I'm babbling. There's so much, Warren. I mean, I was just like, wow, these are all things I haven't really considered. And we have sons and our daughters, you know, possibly someday will get married. I'm like, these are things that, you know, families need to know about.
- [51:06]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Yes, yes, absolutely. I think, you know, I. In the Boy Crisis book, I said that the, you know, that the, the boy crisis resides where dads do not reside. And that was probably the number one cause. And now I realize that the number one cause is not that. The number one cause is that people, human beings, Achilles heel is our inability to handle personal criticism from a loved one without becoming defensive. And if you can't master that first, you're likely to have much more likely to have a divorce. And if you have a divorce, that's likely to lead to the father being less likely to be involved. So knowing how to communicate in such a way that you have, have a type of deep love and that you create a model for your children as to how they can communicate. Because we all know that the children that come from families of divorce are much more likely to be divorced themselves. So the, the greatest gift to me, I hope greater even than the the Boy Crisis book is the Role Made to Soulmate book. Start there. Learn how to be able to communicate in such a way that the criticism doesn't make you feel like you're going to have to walk on eggshells rather than share your concerns, really understand those dynamics so that you have a really not just a, what I call a minimum security prison marriage, which is what often emanates from a marriage where you have children and you can, you know, begin to. Not you're walking on eggshells, but at the same time, you know that having the children, having both parents married is probably better than divorcing. So you're in this minimum security marriage, which, you know, temptation to lead to affairs and, and to lead to psychological affairs, if not magical physical affairs. But more importantly, when you know how to really hear your partner's perspective and concerns and criticisms, your kids pick that up. And when you really know how to appreciate your partner at multiple levels of specificity, your kids pick that up. And the only, only downside from your kids picking that up is that they'll be the most popular kid in school and that has a good size and a bad size to it. But. But I think you get the point, Dr. Farrell.
- [53:26]
Ginny Urich
There's also information in here about suicide. There is a suicide inventory. You talk about that. There's no difference, almost no difference in the percentage of men versus women who are experiencing depression. Your son's chances of becoming a step parent are at least six times greater than your daughters. I could not believe how much you packed into this book and just this. This thought of thinking generations ahead. You wrote the great law of the Iroquois is that their most sacred duty is to think seven generations ahead in making any decision. And it just really caused me to step back. And I was so thankful that this Andrew Pudua suggested it and so thankful that you said yes to come on to talk about it. It these will be. They will reverberate for generations to come in our family. I'm so thankful. We always end with the same question. It's very quick. What is a favorite memory from your childhood that was outside?
- [54:20]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Favorite memory from my childhood that was outside.
- [54:23]
Ginny Urich
Yeah.
- [54:24]
Dr. Warren Farrell
What do you mean by outside? Like outside physically?
- [54:26]
Ginny Urich
Out. Out in nature. Yeah. Outdoors.
- [54:27]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Out of nature. Let's see. My dad was a good runner and that was my one gift. It was my legs and. And so I used to run behind my dad. The memory of that still with me.
- [54:47]
Ginny Urich
How beautiful. Dr. Farell, thank you for the work that you're doing to help with family stabilization. You had the statistic, that 1% reduction in family. I love know if I'm able to find it and we're wrapping up here, but it was something like a 1% reduction in family fracturing. Just. It would do so much. You've given me so much to think about and so much to consider, and I'm so, so grateful. Thank you for being here.
- [55:13]
Dr. Warren Farrell
You are just absolutely wonderful in the way, the depth with which you read and how you pick things up and how you apply it to your personal life rather than just sort of like, okay, this is Potter for a podcast, in and out. But I feel very touched by how deeply you've taken this in and. And the genuineness with which you have shared it with your listeners. I'm so. And viewers. I'm so happy to have done this.
- [55:41]
Ginny Urich
Thank you so much for those kind words, Warren. The pleasure has been all mine and I'm so thankful.
- [55:47]
Dr. Warren Farrell
Thank you.