父親的絕對必要性。Warren Farrell/JB Peterson (The absolute necessity of fathers: Warren Farrell/JB Peterson)

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Dr.
Warren Farrell is the author of books published in 17 languages.
They include Do Award winning international best sellers, Why Men Are the Way They Are, Plus the Myth of Male Power.
Warren is being chosen by the Financial Times as one of the world's top 100 thought leaders.
He is currently the chair of the commission to create a White House counsel on boys and men.
He's the only man in the U.
S to have Bean elected three times to the board of the National Organization for Women Now in New York City.
Dr.
Ferrell has appeared repeatedly on Oprah Today and Good Morning America and has been the subject of features on 2020 in Forbes, The Wall Street Journal, People Parade and The New York Times.
His co author of his newest book is Dr John Grey, the author of Men Are From Mars.
Women Are From Venus.
Once Again, this is the book We're gonna talk not only about the book today, the new one the boy crisis, but also about Dr Farrell's career and his goals and his aims and all of that.
And so I'd like to introduce everyone to Dr Warren Farrell and ask him to tell us what he's up to and why.
Well, I guess what I'm up to.
It sort of the evolution of maybe all that time since 1969 when the women's movement surfaced.
I was very interested in it and felt that women really needed to be able to be equally respected and enter the workplace and have options open.
And I was upset that women were not playing sports to the degree that I felt that was creating the benefits to them of sports.
And so I started articulating this and started talking to my doctoral dissertation advisers about doing this in their first reaction was or in the woman's movement is just a fad.
And I said, I don't think so.
I think this is the beginning of the change of of gender roles from both men and for women, and so I we'll talk with him about that eventually convinced them that I could change my dissertation, and that led me to being ah, seen by and now as someone who was a man who was receptive at a time that the feminist movement was getting a lot of accusations of being man haters.
And so I think I served.
The purpose of here is who here is a man of heels by flesh man who advocates.
But we're advocating here.
Get up and say what we're saying.
It's gonna be harder to call you a man hater.
And so the I started doing that and then ended up speaking all around the world on women's issues and the value of of women being secure enough and competent enough to I'll be able to share the bread winning burdens that men handle on DDE.
That was my focus for until the mid seventies.
In the mid seventies, I began to see that the feminist movement had made a great deal of progress and was, everyone was sort of getting on board who was in at least in the sort of middle class, above and educated.
And so that was.
But it was also a huge number of divorces occurring.
And so I began to say it's important for the Children to have both parents after divorce and Betty for Dad and Gloria Steinem and a woman named Karen to Crow agreed with me.
But oh, now the board and I was on the board of now at that time had gotten elected as a result of my advocacy to the board of now.
And my fellow, um, and female co workers on the board of now said we were in a dilemma here.
And the dilemma is that women are writing us, saying they're gonna withdraw from now if they don't have the option to determine what happens with the Children after divorce and wait.
We don't want to lose now membership because it's not only important for family purposes, but for all the other agendas we have.
And so I said, Well, the important thing is not women, his rights or men's rights.
The important thing is knowing what's best for the Children.
And they said Yes, Warren, Great theory.
But we really need to focus on empowering women of a broad spectrum.
And so they ended up all voting in terms of giving women the option to be fully involved with the Children or not, depending on under the guise that women know the best know the Children the best in there for they know what's best for the Children.
And so now when I began to have a significant amount of tension over that point, and many for Dan and Glorious Item didn't weigh in.
They they weren't on the board of now and then all the other boards of nows around the country began to go the same way that the New York City now it and thats so that led to my disengagement.
Onda.
Also, I started forming hundreds of men's groups, one of which, I think, you know, it was joined by John Lennon, and that was that had a big impact on both the people in the groups that I began to see what men's pain waas.
And so I began to articulate men's pain in as well as women's pain in my my presentations and when I was Onley articulating women's pain and women's challenges, I would, oh able almost always get standing ovations and maybe a knave ridge of three invitations for a new speaking engagement, and that was helping me live financially very well.
But then when I started to integrate the perspectives and feelings of men from the men's groups, there was a lot of I N C list innovations.
Why not?
Why not?
What's right is for new speaking engagements went from 3 to 2 to one and then eventually to zero.
Well, it seems, it seems self evident in some sense that if you're articulating truthfully and carefully, what would be good for either sex.
In some sense, you have to be articulating what would be good for both.
And unless you view the battle of unless you view reality as a battleground between the sexes and and as a zero sum game, we can't have an intelligent conversation about what's good for women or what's good for men.
We have to have a conversation about what's good for men and men and women and women and men and women.
And so why do you think?
What was your sense of why it was when you started to raise these other issues that you were that you were emitting immediately unpopular?
Two questions.
Why do you think that made you unpopular?
And why is it that you so early cottoned onto the fact that there was something going on that wasn't exactly kosher?
In relationship to now is push for for for a particular kind of family structure on a particular view of women's rights?
Yes, I think what happened for me was I Just when I started focusing on what was best for Children and then I began to, we only have minimal amount of research up for that at that point in time.
This is your early seventies, and but we had enough to for me to make a case to the board.
And when I saw the resistance, the degree to which, um, there's there's two things happening.
One is we We don't want to lose our power base.
We don't ever want to have a woman say whatever options she wants should be closed to her.
And so I began to see that the woman's movement was carrying more about women than they were caring about the Children.
That was the first disillusionment that I had.
Okay, so your first your first ethical point in some sense is that when you're speaking about families and you have to balance the rights and responsibilities of men, women and Children, that it makes sense to you to put Children's well being first and foremost, and then do too place men and women as individuals say, ERM, it, perhaps even as a couple blow that out Yes, exactly what I was saying was that freedom of choice is wonderful.
But when you make the freedom of choice to have a child, you then start prioritizing the needs of the child you made.
But you knew that those needs We're going to be the child's needs first when you made that free choice, it wasn't like you were coerced into the into or pressured into making that choice.
You made the free choice to have a child that incorporates the need to put the child's perspectives before yours as part of your free choice, right?
So it's basically the freedom there is the freedom to take on a certain kind of relatively permanent responsibility and then to abide by that come hell or high water essentially into the future that the Children should not respect.
The parents need because part of what I talk about in the boy crisis is that nobody happy that everybody has to be happy in a family, and that and that part of choosing a child to be responsible is to choosing the child, not just to have its needs met, but to also care about what, whether what their moms or dads needs are being met as well, and that has to be very primary and primal and introduced early.
But that the and then Secondly, I also felt that and Betty for Dan felt this way.
Also, that the the women's movement would never go as far as it could go unless the unless men were equally involved and proud of being involved in the father ring roll.
Because a woman who has to take on the entire response a woman who wants to break glass ceilings and go as far as she can but also wants Children had do that.
All of the man is working full time, and she's working full time.
Either the Children get neglected or you know, or something something has to go.
And so women will often say to May, you know, I want to be a habit.
Old woman.
I say you can be a heaven all woman Revere.
Find a man who wants to be home full time with the Children unless reshape society.
So we're saying that that men are not only worrier warriors that we that we praise and call heroes when they go to war and they die for us.
But they're also warriors if they choose.
If you if you choose a man who wants to be fully involved with the child honor him and respect him because we know that the social bribes that we gave men to die allowed men to be willing to sacrifice their lives in exchange for being called hero.
Well, if we if we read frame being a father as being a different type of hero men will follow because men basically go wherever the praise goes.
Okay, Okay, so in the 70.
So you started to put forward the case for Children and to some degree as well simultaneously the case for fathers and you received a fair bit of resistance as a consequence of that.
And it sounds like the way you're setting up the argument.
Is that the conflict?
What was the conflict?
That was it that the women who were being appealed to by now wanted untraveled freedom of choice for them under all circumstances.
Because the reason I'm asking is because if you have Children, obviously half the Children you have are female, and you'd assume that if it was a matter of of women's opening up what would be best for women in any kind of medium to long term manner that the concerns about daughters would be.
Perhaps even if it isn't concerns about sons.
That would be concerns about daughters that would emerge is paramount even over the concerns of the mother.
So So what is it that was?
I still don't exactly get why it was that you weren't being successful because it doesn't make sense because the price was two things happening simultaneously.
One was such a strong emphasis on freedom and the freedom manifested in two areas.
One is in the area of divorce and divorced.
The women were often saying, I don't like my husband.
I want to start a new life.
I want to be able to move out of state if I wish to get the job that I want or my new husband, My new husband or boyfriend has a has, ah wants to move out of state.
And so I want to be able to take my Children or child with me because and I know what's best for my child, which would be like that.
You have medical community saying we don't want women to be participating in the medical community because we know it's best for the patient and not not.
Not that women might have a separate contribution to make.
On the other hand, there was the there was women who wanted to have the freedom to be able to have Children without being married on DSo.
53% of women under 30 today who have Children in the United States have Children without being married.
And the belief was again that women knew what was best for the Children so we could They could take this on if they wanted to.
And they couldn't find a man that they really wanted, that they could raise the child by themselves with the Children themselves.
Okay, so so part of it was actually driven by questioning the necessity of the nuclear family as the smallest viable unit, and part of that was a that's correct.
And being the feminist community started when when I would go to feminist rallies and so on.
There would be many books about Lenin and the nuclear family being that the patriarchal that were oppressing women and so there.
So I think the feminists of the feminist movement grew out of two huge generations.
One was the civil rights movement when there was an oppressor and oppressed.
Then there was the the of the movement of not just civil rights but, uh, after the feminine.
If the civil rights movement came, the the Marxism and the belief that there were oppressors and oppressed in among Marxist and a lot of the feminist movement, the early feminist movement was very We had groups like red Stockings and many other groups like that that were socialist Workers Party take 10 minutes.
That very much believes in Marxism and they had the dichotomy of oppressor versus oppressed.
So when it came to men men, because we earned more because our biological not our biological bar socializing, biological responsibility was to earn the money and do that.
That type of nature of providing the feminist movement looked at the fact that we earned more money once we had Children.
And so therefore we must be the oppressor like those, like the bourgeoisie of Marxism and women must be the A press.
So you have two things happening simultaneously.
This belief that the oppressors are wanting to be equally involved with the Children and then secondly, men having no idea why they have value third men who the very few men that did study the value of being a father and how important it was to Children.
I didn't speak up about it.
And women can hear what men don't say.
So we have this world then, where women were sharing the burden of bread winning.
But no one was even interested in asking the question about whether men could share the burden from women of of earning of, ah, providing equally for the family.
And and women weren't even interested in that because they were so focused on their feet.
Um, and sold men is the oppressor.
And so there was no space to articulate the value of fathers and then in the okay, so well, you know, your terminology is interesting, too, because you're attributing the the desire of the women who were pushing against what you were saying.
Say, yeah, you're attributing that to a desire to freedom.
But it seems to me that you could easily use irresponsibility as a terminology there because freed free, well, freedom without concern for the medium to long term consequences of your actions especially when you're bringing in when you're dealing with minors, when you're dealing with Children, that's not freedom.
That's your responsibility.
That is absolutely irresponsibility.
And that is where we as a society, have failed to come in and say no.
First of all, whenever either sex winds that is a woman wins custody, for example, whenever either sex wins, both sexes lose.
And it's worse than that.
Whether there whenever either sex wins, both sexes lose.
And in the case of family, the Children lose enormously.
And we also need to sort of understand exactly what is it that that that leads to Children doing so much better when they have fathers involved?
I was.
I started researching that, and I ended up as you know, with the boy.
Crisis ended up with more than 70 different ways that when Children have their father involved in it about an equal way that they do so much better than well, it would be a lovely thing.
If you could detail out some of that now and then, we'll go back to the the political ideological story here.
But but see, one of the things that's happened in Ontario recently is that we've our government is introduced legislation that is predicated on the idea that all families are equal.
And the the idea behind that you could argue is laudable.
I wouldn't argue that, but you could argue it that you know people have a variety of ways of solving the problem of having Children and that there's a variety of viable solutions to that problem and that no one family organizational type should be privileged above the others.
I mean, I suppose with the exception of multi partner marriages, which we still don't approve off, let's say the problem without, as far as I can tell, is that it does appear from the research that the nuclear family is the smile, smallest viable unit.
Which is not to say that there aren't single mothers or single fathers who do an admirable job under trying conditions, but part of the problem.
This is a deep problem is that whenever you whenever you pause that something as a value, so you might say what we want intact families, mother and father, that's that.
That's the value we're heading for, because that seems to be best for the Children.
Then you produce a rank order of accordance with that and the people who aren't in accordance with that value.
You can easily make a case that they're being discriminated against.
And we're in a situation in our society now where even if the discrimination occurs, let's say because of the pursuit of an admirable value, it's regarded as prejudicial.
And I think that's fed by that underlying hypothesis that was anti nuclear family, that any sort of hierarchical structure is part of the tyrannical patriarchy.
It's something like that that's running underneath it.
So anyways, let's review if you would be very helpful.
I think for everyone some of the many ways that it's necessary for Children to have fathers, why that's better.
And perhaps also first, for society as well.
Not just for Children, absolutely.
Children that have a lot about it equal are more than equal.
Father involvement have a number of things in common, is a rule and obviously these reversals of this and that everyone, is this this this pattern.
But the first is they're far more likely to have post own gratification and elaborate on that a little bit more.
Postpone gratification is probably the single most important quality to becoming successful and becoming successful, especially being employed and in a job that has some meaning for you, is one of the most important ingredients and happiness on a sense of purpose and a sense of motivation and a sense of willingness to get up in the morning.
And so, in a little while, I'll be happy to just trace back how that was born.
Gratification happens more when you have Ah, father.
Yeah, because I'm really interested in hearing about that 2nd 2nd layer this form.
Children that have an equal amount of father involvement are far less likely to be depressed.
They're far less more likely to be assertive and not aggressive, which is something you usually think of.
Men is being aggressive.
But actually, the Children of both girls and boys whose fathers are involved are far more likely to understand the distinction between being assertive and being aggressive and choose assertiveness boys.
Another surprising one for me doing the research was finding that boys and girls who are raised with about an equal amount of father involvement are far more likely to be empathetic because I always sort of empathy coming predominantly from Mom's and I'll be happy to explain in a bit why it does come more from Mom's.
But why the outcome for the child is not more empathy.
The outcome for the child is lesson, but they say it's a little bit more on that later.
Yeah, far more likely both boys and girls to drop out of school if there isn't far father involvement far more likely when, when when a relationship breaks up of child that has not had significant father involvement is much more likely to be depressed and be withdrawn and be feel alienated, far more likely to be addicted to video games far more likely to be addicted to video porn.
Far less more likely to have a few social skills, few emotional skills to do worse in every academic area, but especially in reading and writing, which are the two biggest predictors of success far more likely to have a lower sperm count have.
And here's an amazing thing I just discovered toward the end of the research for the boy crisis I I saw in Pediatrics magazine and that Children who by the age of nine don't have a significant amount of father involvement both girls and boys were likely to have shorter telomeres.
And as most of us know, the telomeres are pivotal in predicting life expectancy.
So, boys and girls, the average shorter telomere for a nine year old boy or girl without father involvement was 14%.
Uh, I'm sorry.
It was yes, uh, 14% shorter.
But the boys telomeres were then again, 40% shorter than the girls.
So here this was predicting about a 14% shorter life expectancy for the average child without father involvement by the age of nine already and yet the boys were suffering more.
So two things fascinated me.
There is no if all the things like, you know, dropping out of school and things like that.
I asked myself, Well, maybe this is because boys with father involvement just have better, you know, better neighborhoods.
The fathers earned more the family's heirloom.
Or maybe it's a matter of poverty.
Verses.
Not So.
I started looking at people boys and girls growing up and good quote good neighborhoods with quote good schools and comparing them with boys and girls growing up in poor neighborhoods and poor schools, and found that the that boys and girls growing up in good neighborhoods with poor schools that did not have significant father involvement did about the same as boys and girls growing up in poor neighborhoods with poor schools that did have father involvement.
That father involvement was really a cz good, a predictor of success, a CZ, the quality of the school system, the quality of the neighborhood and the socioeconomic class.
And this is what's led Thio to the psychologist get gathering together behind people like Warshaw.
100 psychologists and research is saying, You know, this is not a correlation.
The involvement of Father This is not a matter of socioeconomic issues.
This is a matter of actual fathers.
Father's father's involvement, especially the biological father's involvement, actually makes a significant difference.
We have been wrong about the assumption that this was probably just a correlation.
And so the more I looked, the more I found just every nightmare of a parent to be so increased when there was not a significant amount of father involvement and I was seeing I was dating between before I married Liz, the woman you just met just before we got on before we got married, 14 years ago, I was dating a number of women.
Almost every woman had was a single mother.
And these every single woman was working her rear off trying to balance her life.
Every woman used the word overwhelmed by the way she felt.
Every almost every woman said, Well, I'd like my dad and that the dad involved.
But But when the But I started listening to the butts of the women and then listening to men who had wanted to be more involved with their Children and listening to what the differences were between, what?
Let the minute what made the men feel not wanted, what made the men feel excluded and why the women felt that they needed to not have the man involved.
And I saw this entire set of misunderstandings here.
And if I hope the boy crisis does anything is just sort of explained, you know, here are the 10 major things that dads do that that sort of annoy women or make women feel that they're not protecting their Children adequately, which, when they understand the purpose of these things and when dads get their homework done enough to articulate to the moms, the purpose of these things that will realize that the thes air necessary ingredients in a child's life.
Okay, so that's a good That's a good place to go next.
So you laid out Ah, whole slew of reasons, a slew of consequences of fatherlessness and will return back to the causal relationship between what men do and these beneficial outcomes.
But if you could go on now to tell us what it is that men are doing at a micro level, then we could return to the causal link between that and the positive outcomes.
And you said those also caused some contention in the household.
Yes, you know, give one example, for example, will be The father is roughhousing with the kids and the mom's looking over and saying, looking at scans and thinking, OK, when should I interfere when should not interfere?
And the mom saying yourself, Uh uh, Jimmy, uh, you know, um, please keep the kids away from the credenza.
A.
Repeat the kids away from the couch because you think could hit their head there.
Why don't you wait hubby, too?
Tomorrow, when you could take this outside, I feel much safer.
The kids shit and then the mother is sort of hesitating to not be overly controlling.
And yet, at the same time, she's feeling she has to monitor.
The husband is Melas.
Monitor the husband with the kids, and she's feeling in the back of her mind like, I know that sooner or later there's gonna be a There's gonna be an accident here, and I'm gonna be upset with myself for not being stricter.
But on the other hand, the kids seem to be having fun, so I should let things go Well, you know, there's a There's a cycle biologist named Yak Pancks F who is one of the world's great biological psychologists, and he studied rough and tumble play in in animals.
So rats, for example, ah, huge part of the socialization process that's key to the development of the prefrontal cortex and juvenile male routes in particular emerges and matures as a consequence of rough and tumble play.
And one of the amazing things that banks have discovered it and this truly is.
An amazing thing is that, um, if you if you pair two rats together and then let them play repeated bouts, the Big Rat will dominate the little route to begin with in the first about.
But if the Big Rat doesn't let the little rat win about 30% of the time in repeated play boats than the little Rat won't play anymore.
So you get an emergent morality, an emergent, play centered morality, even among rats, as a consequence of rough and tumble play and that rough and tumble I did a fair bit of research on rough and tumble play about Oh, it's probably 20 years ago now, 15 years ago, anyways.
And it's really quite clear that rough and tumble play helps Children parameter rise their bodies so that they know how they extend and and also what limits there is in the use of physical interactions with another person.
What's fun, what's provocative, what's pushing it too far.
What's painful.
And, of course, kids love rough and tumble play as well.
They're they're just absolutely starving for it, and we've squeezed it out of the kindergartens, the nursery schools, the elementary schools to junior high schools, all of that, and four and forbid.
And what Pancks have also found was that if you deprived juvenile routes of the opportunity to engage in active rough and tumble play, that they showed symptoms that were broadly analogous to those of attention deficit disorder in human boys, and that you could also treat that with Ritalin in the same way in rats as you could with boys.
So there's that rough and tumble play issue.
You know what you might think to The question is, one question is, why might a mother be distrustful of the rough and tumble play episode?
And some of that might be sensitivity with regards to the kids.
But huge part of that also is trust on her trust with regards to the father, you know, cause it's rambunctious and noisy.
And if she trusts, let's say that that active masculinity that plays rough, then she'll stay away and let the fund happen.
But if there's distrust running through the family, then then she'll stand between the kids and the father, and then he won't get to involve himself in that way, and then he'll turn off and I've seen that happen.
Many, many families.
Okay, so there's rough and tumble play.
That's a big one.
What else?
What else do you see?
Let me take the the evolution of how rough and tumble play goes, and all the dimensions of where the simply slip that it leads to.
So the the father the what the mom with me that the mom or the dad know is that this rough and tumble play leads to the types of things that you just mentioned.
But you're also evident.
Indio and Elephants and so on also leads to the distinction between a child being able to distinguish between being assertive versus aggressive.
So the so the kid starts, for example, maybe kicking the dad and the wrong place or poking the dead in the eyes are pulling the dad's hair.
And the dad says, Sweetie, you can think you can fake eye contact to the left and then move to the right to win in this wrestling match.
Or you can You can do this this and this, but you can't do these things.
Yes, and if you do these things well, stop the roughhousing eso there So there isn't really important issue there, so two things they're so imagine that imagine that a rough and tumble boat is like a dance, okay, and the point of the dances so that both people are having a good time.
Well, it's happening because otherwise it's not play right.
And as soon as either party is no longer having a good time, you've actually snapped out of the cycle biological function of the place circuit.
So basically, what you're telling the child by putting those rules on is we can interact physically within a very limited set of parameters.
And you what you have to learn to do is to be sophisticates, sophisticated player within that set of parameters, and you want to learn how to push the boundaries right, because the most fun, rough and tumble play is right on the edge between assertiveness and aggression.
So and you can see kids like I used to work in day care centers when I was a kid when I was 18 19th and the kids would line up to rough and tumble play with me because that was still allowable then and they were so desperate for it.
It was just ridiculous, and I could really tell the difference between the kids who had engaged in that sort of play, and the ones that hadn't and the ones that hadn't were painfully awkward and they would hurt themselves and you.
When you wrestled with him, they put their thumb in your eye.
Or and they would cry often, too, when they got surprised but not hurt, you know, because they couldn't tell the difference between just being startled and being hurt.
And so they were fragile.
And that also made them not fun to play with.
And the thing that's so interesting about that, too, is the PGA.
Talked about this when he talked about the development of Children.
Is that you know the more sophisticated pretend play and then sophisticated cognitive play that emerges, say, between five and seven and then with the cargo to play older than that is that unless you have that underlying cycle, motor embodied dance down, you don't get to really proceed in a sophisticated way to those higher levels of plate because other people don't want to play with you.
So the rough and tumble play the importance of that can hardly be overstated.
So absolute.
And the framework here is that when you set up a system where you said that men are part of the patriarchy, their their their desire is to dominate women and make rules to benefit minute the expensive atT, the benefit minute, the expensive women.
You have a framework.
An emotional setting, which does not is not conducive then saying, Here's my value or women saying Let me see what the checks and balances of parenting is that leads to the best of you coming out in the best of me coming out.
All of that has sort of We skipped over an inherent sense of Father knows best to Father knows less, um, and and and and and so the The process that I'll be sharing in a moment of what rough housing leads to and the slippery slope that happens when it doesn't happen is what has not even been nurtured as a possibility to be articulated in this culture at this time.
I also think, too, you know that if you have ah, a partner who hasn't been played with then that partner can't tell the difference between boisterous rambunctiousness and aggression.
And if there's a hypothesis about domination and the patriarchy running its course underneath that, then there's gonna be conceptual confusion about the physical interactions that have the appearance of submission and dominance because that's part of the rough housing play routine that that is going to be viewed through a lens of tyrannical interaction rather than just good fun.
I mean, you can tell the difference, because if the kids were rough and tumble playing, they're unbelievably enthusiastic about it and engaged and laughing and giggling and like, they'll play right to the point of exhaustion because they need it.
They need it so much.
But that's a hard thing to observe from the outside.
If you're not accustomed to that.
And if you don't have that framework of of men having and Dad's having a value to begin with, absolutely not.
So here's Here's maybe what might bring be helpful for a mom to understand that the rough and tumble pry it play it play, we now know, helps Children distinguish between being assertive and aggressive.
But a number of other things off also happen during that play, which is that is a bond that is created between the father and the child and in almost every enduring expert witness works to help Children have both parents have to divorce.
I've observed more than 50 families and usually the father interacting with the Children.
And in almost every case, every case, actually, which I believe that I have seen this is this bond is used by the father to say things like, Okay, um, we're number of housing now.
Tell you what.
You get your homework done, you get your chores done, you get all ready for bed brush, teeth, teeth brush well, and the bed time is nine o'clock.
Whenever you get that, will that done will have between the time you get it done and the time of nine.
In order for you to have some more fun, either with rough housing or reading my favorites, your favorite story or whatever you prefer, it's your choice.
Well, you know, with with bank steps work, too.
He found that the little routes the rats will work to enter a play arena because because play you think play is ah so except established very, very clearly that there is a primary place circuit in mammals.
It's a separate cycle biological circuit.
It's not exploration.
It's a whole different motivational drive, but that the act but activity in that circuit is intrinsically pleasurable, and part of that appears to be because it's so key to proper socialization, that it's regarded by my Children and by social mammals as intrinsically valuable.
And so it makes perfect sense that that could be used as a source of primary reward.
And I think your comments about the the man and the kids binding themselves together through play is also really important is one of the things that I do with young man, who you know, I think young men tend to be somewhat alienated from infants who are under about nine months old because they're not really equipped to know what the hell to do with them.
I mean, they can learn, and they could be good at it, but it's not their domain of natural expertise.
But once a kid hits about nine months and starts to be able to imitate and £2 to and to play, and to respond to gentle teasing like that's a perfect time for their father to swoop in is very helpful for a mother, by the way, who wants to have another child and to start really cementing a relationship that's based on that interesting combination of of high energy fund plus the disciplined interactions that are necessary as a precursor to that.
And if you interfere with that, then you stop the farther from being able to form that from liking his kids.
Really, you know, because that's how the liking comes about.
This is through play, and so it's it's crucial to have crucial significance.
Absolutely thank you is that the additional framework that you're placing on this is really deep thing they don't understanding of.
It is well called affective neuroscience written by yak, Except it's on my reading list on my website and I reckon, end up because he lays out the findings from the animal literature on the primary placer.
It's really he should have won a Nobel Prize for I mean, discovering an entirely new motivational system in the brain is a major, major contribution.
And to also the other thing that he did that was so cool and it sort of reminded me of Jean PJ's work a little bit ist He made a very strong case that out of play emerges an ethic and you know that that's why I was so interested when you mentioned that interactions with father actually increased empathy because, you know, if someone has empathy for you.
That means that I mean, that could lead to a certain kind of narcissism, right?
Because you're always the center of attention.
You're not empathic unless you learn that you're not any more important than the next person, particularly the person that you happen to be playing with.
So okay, so let's continue with with what father's heir doing.
Yep.
Yeah.
So in that rough housing, what happens is that the bond that is created by the dad allows the dad to say You've got, you know, here's will continue the rough housing if you get you know, between 8 30 and nine, if you if you have everything done, but so that the child learns to postpone gratification from doing the what it loves to do right then and there that is, be roughhouse with and deal with what it has to deal with before it gets more about what it needs.
And so but the bonds.
So that's interesting.
So you you actually think, and I wonder if there's been any any.
See, we don't know much about the origin of the trade conscientiousness, which is, at least in part the ability to delay gratification and it is after intelligence.
It's the best predictor of long term life success, especially in managerial and administrative jobs and algorithmic jobs.
It's not associated with creativity, but but that's that society issue.
So your hypothesis is that the primary way men are socializing, that is, by using work to play as, ah as, ah, as a bridge.
Yes, that that play creates a bond.
So ah, lot of the problem is when Mom's often talked to say, You have to do this, you have to do that.
You have to do this.
You have to do that.
The mother is often experience, but the child is sort of the disciplinarian who is always making him or her do things.
And there's the seeds of rebellion start to occur of sort of like, How much am I gonna be myself?
How much am I going to do what Mom does who I want to be a mama's boy or it doesn't even have religiously but no, you just sort of feel like you're being pushed down by all the rules.
But with Dad, the bond that is your moms who roughhouse with the Children Ah Bond is created, and from the end, and you want to return to that that connection.
So you it's like a child going on a a roller coaster where you know there's an enormous amount of safety, but you also excitement, but also an enormous amount of safety.
And so you trust the dad to combine that boat that you want to return to that so you're willing to focus on getting done what you need to do your homework, your chores, your brush, the teeth or whatever in order to get what you want to do, which is a You know, I remember most of postpone gratification, But now let's take the slippery slope when this doesn't happen.
So okay, so let me let me just add one more thing to them.
Well, the thing that's so cool about that is that you've also provided a really intelligent piece of parenting advice for fathers because you're so let's say, B.
F.
Skinner, who is the famous animal behaviorist, demonstrated quite clearly that you could train animals with reward more effectively than with threats or punishment.
Now threatened punishment is necessary.
Obviously, we wouldn't have biological systems sub serving those emotions if they weren't necessary But But reward is harder to use because you have to be much more attentive and intervene when something good happens.
And so you really have to be watching.
But your hypothesis here is look.
Fathers spend a bunch of time playing with your kids and having as much fun as you can with them because I formulating that bond, you can use that as a as the source of reward that will be appreciated by the child with regards to disciplinary strategies.
So it's it's it's a it's a twofold victory.
One is it's fun and you get to like your kids and have a good time with him.
But the second is you have a very positive means of disciplining them in the best sense, encouraging them in disciplining them.
So that's that's a really useful thing to know, practically so deepening the trust to the kids like like you're playing and you're right on the edge that you were talking about.
But there's Dad to make sure that the fun doesn't get too hard for you, for him, for your sister and so on, and so that that's all happening at the same time now, when the right, and that's embody.
You could see that two ways that's embodied trust.
So if you toss a little kid up in the air and catch them, I mean, it's very exciting to them both being tossed up because of the threat.
But then the relief that occurs because of the safety that's put in there.
So it's not abstract, it's really demonstrated.
And then a dad tossing that child up and and then, in fact, missing the child quote unquote and the child lands in the bed and you were miss like, Oh, you know, it was missed.
So you're gonna catch me.
But, you know, also recognize Yes, well, that shows that that shows that things can happen that aren't entirely what you predict, but within the confines of a trusting relationship that's still OK.
And then you could also imagine if the if the dad is wrestling with more than one kid at the same time, then he's also acting as just referee, right?
So and then the kids learn how to be judicious in the distribution of attention.
They learn how to play fair.
They learn how everybody how everybody can have a turn and everybody wins at the same time.
And so and that bonding is what is part of what creates just Everything you just said is part of what leads the child to have empathy, training and the empathy training came from.
No, you were too rough on your sister there.
If you try it again, you can't be that rough.
Oh, you still continue to being that rough.
Okay, let's no more play.
That's right.
Place stops when everyone isn't having fun.
What?
When my kids were little, we had this couch that was a sectional in six pieces, and so we could put the couches facing each other.
And then we put up the the the backs all the way around it.
So it was like a little wrestling ring.
And so then I would take the kids in there and just wrestle them half to death, you know?
But one of the things I used to do was if one of the kids was rough with the other and made them cry.
Then I noticed that the kid who made the other kid cry wouldn't look at the crying kit they look away and avoid.
And so I always used to say No, no, no, you look, you look and you see what happened because that triggers that embodied empathy.
And then you could easily have a conversation and say, Look, you know, is that how you want the game to go, or do you want everybody to have fun?
And the thing is, once the kid actually looks, then they've got it right because they can't escape from that empathic identification.
And so, yeah, when the child doesn't have that said, we have all this data now these 70 different areas where Children do so much worse when they don't have ah, father involvement.
So let's look at the next stage of that now what?
When, When That father doesn't not do this rough housing and as just one example of many and does not, isn't it not enforcing boundaries?
The child then doesn't learn to have that postpone gratification.
So we have hard data on this.
The Children Children raised predominately by dads are only 15% likely to have a DHD Children raise predominately by Mom's or 30% likely to have a DHD.
So if we looked at what we just talked about the Children that are raised by the dads are learning that they have to postpone that occasion, you know, in order to get the reward that they want.
Now you take that capacity to postpone gratification in school.
The child without postpone gratification, assigned a homework assignment, doesn't really feel, is oftentimes distracted by a text that's come in distracted by the opportunity to play video games distracted by wanted to exchange notes with other kids is distracted, distracted to shirt just well, Yeah, well of the destructive thing about that.
There's no need to explain a DHD.
What there is a need to do is to explain why every kid doesn't have it.
And the answer is, the answer that you just laid out is that some kids learn how to control their destructive distractibility doesn't require an explanation because people are distracted by what's immediately rewarding and that doesn't require it's like addiction.
Actually, addiction doesn't require explanation, either.
What requires explanation is the development of the resources that allow you to withstand addictive pressures in the face of the fact that they're always they're everywhere and they're powerful.
So it sze development of control.
That's that's really the curious issue and I've never heard this.
I've never heard anyone make this connection between the use of play as a reward and that delay of gratification.
Now it's a very, very interesting idea.
That's very interesting.
And and then let me take it another step further from me.
So when this delayed gratification is happening and or does not happen and then the boy isn't able to finish homework, he starts because beginning to feel ashamed of himself.
Or if he's maybe athletic, and his parents believe that it's really gonna be helpful to the child to have beautiful dreams.
Sweetie, you want to be an MBA player and your toll and you continue practicing.
You could be an N B and N B A player, and you can have your dreams.
But the post.
He doesn't have that postpone gratification, so cannot do the boring repetition that comes with all success, including a being an Olympic star or an N b A player or anything else.
I'm playing the piano or learning to read or yeah, great example.
Certainly the violin on DSO U S.
O anything that is his dream.
The bigger the dream, the bigger the disappointment and It's not just disappointment that he fears help will happen to his parents, but also the defect in the sense that he says he's going to do one thing in school.
His his teachers, his peers are not respecting him as much.
Hey, uh, cheerleaders aren't going first in 10 in a concussion again to him, that goat doing it to somebody else first.
Then do it again.
I am.
And so the boy is beginning to feel shape.
Yeah, well, you think you think shame.
Look here.
Here's the precondition for shame.
So let's say that you are attracted by a goal.
Naturally, and, you know, maybe that scaffold it by your parents.
Maybe it's scaffolding by your peers, but it's something that you're naturally turning your attention towards.
It grips you in some sense, okay, and we'll assume that it's a difficult goal.
And so then there's an ethic that emerges out of that, which is that if that goal is valuable and it's difficult, then their sacrifices that have to be made, delays of gratification that have to be implemented in order for you to be worthy to attain that goal.
Okay, that's all part of the game.
If you think about it as a game, well, then then if you observe yourself unable to play the rules of the game played by the rules, then how can you not have any?
How can you not suffer shame and self contempt?
Because you've already adopted an ethical framework, which is this is worth attaining.
And if you observe in yourself, then the inability to attain it because you're constantly being distracted, then you're going to have contempt for yourself and then the way out of that.
This is something I learned from nature.
Here's the terrible thing about that, because that's a great pathway.
Denialism.
Because let's say you pause it.
Four goals in succession that you find valuable.
And then you observe yourself unable to discipline yourself to attain the goals, while the most after four successive failures.
It's like Homer Simpson said to Bart.
He said to Bart, You tried and you failed and then you tried and you failed again.
What did you learn?
And Homer says to Bart, the conclusion is, never try, right, and so if you fail a few times, that's at attaining something of importance because you see that you have no discipline, then the logical response to that is to cease positing goals.
Absolutely.
And that's it.
That's exactly what happens.
And but we have through technology sort of a perfect escape.
And that escape is into video games where you can identify with the hero and you can lose the game as often as you wish to with nobody noticing on dhe.
Then, as you begin to get better with certain with certain manipulations, you can play that game with certain types of people and an increase your your skill.
Set it at the game.
But you're never able to translate that into everyday life where you, uh, and and so you start becoming addicted to that game, which is which are designed to increase your dopamine without having to actually achieve any well, the thing about the games that's that's different.
Like the video games.
What's different?
So a game for a little kid has to be immediately rewarding.
That's why rough and tumble play works, for example, has to be immediately rewarding, and then the game shades into real life.
But as thegame shades into real life, what happens is the rewards air deferred and you get more and more disciplined at not being immediately rewarded, like when you're learning to read or play the piano for the long term goal.
The thing about video games is that they do require the development of skill.
But but the immediate reward is built in along with the delayed reward, because otherwise the game wouldn't be fun for someone who's learning.
And so the problem is, is that a lot of real life games aren't necessarily fun.
Well, you're learning them because you have to attain a certain level of mastery, and that requires discipline.
That's also what's wrong with the idea that Children can just learn in keeping with what they're spontaneously interested in.
It's like there's some truth in that, because why not file follow a child's interests?
But the problem is, is that many highly skilled endeavors, virtually any endeavor that it's going to be of economic or productive