“The Boy Crisis” | One Big Reason Why 50% of the Workforce is Under-Performing with Warren Farrell

Audio Transcription

Thirteen multimillion dollar businesses. Eight kids get ready to enter the thrive time show.

Alright,

they should walk it back to another exciting edition of the thrive time show on your radio. No one. Today’s show. We have a gentleman by the name of Dr Warren Farrell. I encourage everybody to do your research on Dr Warren Farrell. That’s f a r r e l l dot. He has a phd from Nyu in political science. He’s been the author of seven books on men’s and women’s issues. He’s probably written a book since I’ve slept last and he’s been featured on Oprah, Larry King and a variety of news outlets and he is passionate about talking to you and I about the importance of fathers. Solid, sustainable, caring, involved. Fathers weren’t welcome onto the show.

Thank you. It’s a pleasure. I like the way you just described that. Solid, sustainable, caring. Very good.

Well, Warren, I have five kids and uh, all of which I cofounded with my wife. And so I’ve been married to her for 17 years and I’m really, really curious about your newest book, the boy crisis. Can you, can you share with us what the boy crisis is? All about whites, not just hyperbole.

Yes. Um, I looked at all the developed, well actually all the countries that United Nations had investigated and found that in 63 of the largest developed nations that boys were falling significantly behind, girls in reading, writing all subjects, math, science, but particularly in reading and writing and reading and writing of the two biggest predictors of success, success in both career wise and in many dimensions of happiness. And so that concerned me to say the least, but as I looked more closely, I saw that those were developed countries, that this was happening in and in developed countries. We’re allowing permission for two things. One was for an increased amount of divorce now that they had had survival needs taken care of. They had a permission for divorce that they didn’t have before, and then secondly, permission for women to have children without being married. I don’t have a big thing about being married and not being married, so I didn’t worry about that until I looked at the fact that the, that women who have children without being married, it was an extremely high chance that the father would not be involved with the child either at all or past the age of between three and four years of age and that the children in and when children were children of either divorce or children of.

I’m a single mom parenting there. That was, that was the category of boys and girls that were having problems, but the boys were having problems to a much greater degree than the girls. And so for example, um, boys were far more likely to commit suicide. That’s, um, being, having minimal or no father involvement is the single biggest predictor of suicide. We all hear about the, you know, the drug epidemics in opioid crises and so on. Well being, having minimal or no father involvement is the single biggest predictor of being addicted to drugs and dying from drug overdoses and the opioid crisis. And then we take a little bit of a further look at, we look at our prisons and you know, I, I always thought, well, we have these things called women’s centers all over the country, but we also have met centers and those men centers are prisons.

But, but I didn’t know about these men centers is that they are really centers for boys and men who have minimal or no father involvement at the greater than 90 percent level. And then I looked at how, you know, um, uh, so I saw another phenomenon happening which was that boys who heard heard us and a meaning that I looked at the school shootings and the mass shootings and um, whether we look at Adam Lanza, Elliot Rodger is dylan roof, Nicholas crews, Stephen Paddock and um, David Katz at the new Jacksonville shooter and they all have in common, not all of them, but all of those particular boys and young men had in common that they had minimal or no father involvement. Then I look at, you know, the cost of the advice at boys who heard her at us. Another way that, that category fits is with boys who are isis recruits.

Isis recruits are almost always children who have minimal or no father involvement, including the smaller percentage of girls, um, who have, who are isis recruits, and they also are characterized by that. And so I, you know, if you start adding the, the psychological costs and the economic costs together, just think of the economic costs and the psychological cost of homeland security and the laws that have changed and the trillions of dollars we spent defending ourselves against Isis and the, and the fears of terrorist attack. And then we look at the, you know, the millions and millions of dollars we spend on prisons and then the loss of income from people in prisons who could otherwise be tax payers as opposed to tax trainers. And then we look at the fear that we have around school shootings and mass shootings. You just get a little bit of a clue of both two things.

One is the degree of the boy crisis and be, and I’ve only covered about to have about 70 major areas. Um, and then secondly, um, the, the cost of it economically and psychologically on ourselves, but also on our children and we almost all know enough about their children’s heritage to know that if a child is in prison and has no minimal or no education and drops out of school and is a drug addict and a woman, a woman becomes pregnant who is a drug addict, we know that the, that has a huge impact on her children. And then the next, you know, generations after that

no born, I want to make sure that the listeners have some clarification because we have hundreds of thousands of people that tune into this show every week for practical business skills and a baby saying, what are we doing? What’s Warren talking about? How does this pertain to me? Okay, well, I have a business. I’ve met multiple companies. My partner and I, between the two of us, we have 13 multimillion dollar companies. I won’t mention the name of the company is. I don’t want to call out the employees, but chuck, you know what I’m talking about. We have a company, we might as well call it, single moms.com born and all of the women that work there with the exception of maybe 10 percent are single moms and so I started doing some research as I was preparing for today’s interview and according to the US Census Bureau right now, according to, and this was posted on fatherhood.org, one out of three children live in homes where the biological father is completely absent.

A to hammer home what you just said. Fulton County, Texas, the DD Department of corrections. They reported that 85 percent of all the youth in prison are coming from fatherless homes and that you’re 20 times more likely to go to jail if you don’t have a dad and that 70 percent of the state operated institutions, the people in those institutions are coming from a fatherless home. And so if you’re out there and you run a business, you’ve got to understand that today management war and really is mentorship because these kids are coming from a place of brokenness of brokenness. They don’t know a lot of these boys. They’re 18 or 22, but they’re not ready to be a man yet. They’ve had nobody show them what it’s like for you to really deep dive into where you’ve written about the problems that these, that these boys are having and alarming problem they’re having with motivation, grades, attention deficit disorder, and having a complete addiction to video games. They’re not sleeping. They’re staying up all night playing video games. These 21 year old people that aren’t ready to be men yet.

Absolutely. You’re spot on, and let me just put this in terms of total business sense. There’s no person I know who owns a business who doesn’t understand that probably the key thing that she or he needs to look for aside from attitude, is the postpone gratification. If your. If your employee doesn’t know how to put off doing the things that need to be put off, doing the things that he wants to do or she wants to do and needs to just handle. I’m just go for the latest texts that has come in, or the latest software that has come up with the lady’s picture is from a friend, a family friend that has come up and they get distracted by that. Um, and they’re, they’re not motivated to sort of make sure that the bottom line is reached that, that you have deep trouble, you have sneakiness occur, you have the closing of just every.

Everything that you, the lack of motivation and that lack of postpone gratification are enormous because at the employee’s cover up for themselves in a number of ways that become destructive not only to the bottom line directly, but also the, to the whole motivation and spirit of the company. And that tends to sort of be a rampant. Now, if you have a lot of single moms, a good news and bad news, the good news is you have a lot of moms who really need to make an income and need to and they’re usually working extremely hard and they usually juggling, um, their home life with their, um, you know, with, with their work life for sure. And um, and they are not a. and so that’s one challenge. Secondly is the single mom, the children, if they’re single moms, those children, their children are being raised without that balance of data involvement with mom involvement.

Therefore mom tends to sort of, uh, this type of thing. And there’s the, they’re sitting at a dinner table, let’s say, and mom says, sweetie, you can’t have your ice cream until you finish your piece because she wants to be a good mom and encouraged the eating of vegetables. And um, and dad in his home also says the same thing. You can’t have your ice cream until you’re finished your piece. And then the, um, the children of course do the same thing. They test the boundaries to see how much ice cream they can get before they finish their keys. And um, and, but they’re the different stops. A mom tends to feel guilty about the divorce and feel like she’s been working all day as a single mom. And she’s, um, you know, trying to do a half a dozen things when she comes home. She doesn’t have enough time to do our job well.

She doesn’t have enough time to raise the children while she’s exhausted. Maybe the child had a bad experience in one way or the other at home, and so they’re about ready to talk about more piece versus fewer piece in order to get the ice cream and the mom thinks to herself, I barely have, but at x amount of minutes with my son or daughter are both of them and I’m not going to spend these few minutes arguing over a few P’s. So I’ll tell you what, sweetie, have one or two more p’s or five or 10 more piece and then you can have your ice cream. So what the daughter and son learns is with mom. I can manipulate a better deal. I just have to find out what strikes her. Uh, what’s her vulnerable point? I can see that she wants to be sensitive to me so I can appeal to any number of things that might make her feel like she feels bad or guilty.

Interrupt you just for a second. I’m glad I never did that. I will father of five kids and I just want to share with you last night, this is a real scenario. My son Chuck, you know, one of our employees, Marshall Morris, right, is teaching my son more and how to make music. He’s 11, had a beat match, had a create music, you know, jobs. He’s teaching my son how to a create music using logic, a beat making program is also white. My Son’s really into deejaying Warren. He’s also into lawnmowing. He says, obsessed with lawnmowing Warren and he’s supposed to. He had homework he’s supposed to do now. Warren, I don’t know that this is gonna fall into the clinical, uh, recommended moves that you learned as a phd from Nyu or anything you would talk about on Oprah. But I think oprah could probably relate to this old school kind of terminology.

I talked to Marcella said, Marshall, are you telling me he didn’t do his homework? And he said, well, yeah, he didn’t do his homework. I said, Aubrey, do you want me to open up a five gallon drum of will pass? And my son knows what that means. One in a meeting, he’s like, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. There’s something about being the father where the sun is scared of you a little bit. There’s a little bit of a fear factor there. I don’t hit my kids. I don’t beat my kids. I mean they, they, but you know what I’m saying? No, there’s a certain difference with the father talking to the son sometimes kind of have that dead tone and it’s in my son, I think sincerely scared of me. I don’t think we’re. We’re friends. He respects me, but he’s like an Indian and Indian and I guess he was doing all this work.

Their warrant. Am I? My wife tells him something. He sometimes wants to see where the compassion stuff stops and where the enforcement starts with me. He’s just scared all the time. I think this is really big for people to understand this. You talked about delayed gratification and a lot of employees today are showing lack of the ability to do, to, to delay gratification. A lot of the boys and I just wanted to pile on so the listeners can understand how profound this idea is. The Harvard Business Review has reported that since 2010, I don’t know if the listeners are aware of this, more employees quit their jobs than or terminated or who can’t find work. Let me repeat. More people are quitting their jobs that are terminated or who can’t find jobs. That means Warren, that a lot of people today that can’t quote unquote find a job or quitting their jobs.

They’re not being terminated and there’s jobs available, so there’s a lot of people that are tough to employ. And then psychology today, you mentioned somebody being interrupted by a tweet or a text. According to psychology today, the average American is now interrupted 85 times per day on their smart phone with a text or a social media update and I just want to ask you, or when you were growing up, I mean how many a times a day where you interrupted with a text or a tweet or have social meadow? For me it was zero where you were. Were you around the zero average or where did you get 85 interruptions a day growing up?

Well, I grew up before there was even computers, so I didn’t have many texts interrupting me. The only texts I had interrupting needs is American history. One O one and Algebra two. Oh, two.

Yeah. I mean you and I though his kids, I mean we would have to go to the quote unquote adult store to get the magazine or go to the certain gas station that would sell it to you as kids. We’re now, I mean the temptations, just a click away and if people have less self control because they don’t have the dads. And I really want to get your thoughts on this. You were, you were saying I saw a Ted x talk that you did where you were saying that the boy crisis is really something that we need to be concerned about. And you even went onto to say that school shootings are mostly the white boys method of acting out. Could you talk about why we need to be concerned about it and what we can do about this epidemic of, of boys that frankly, oh, we’re having a crisis.

Yes. Actually, let me go back to that, that, that crucial moment where the boy sensors that his mom can be manipulated by appealing to our empathy. Um, and, and so that’s what allows him to see that he doesn’t have to do the postpone gratification. He can do the immediate gratification if he is smart enough to manipulate a better deal, which is why a lot of very, um, minimally motivated boys are actually quite smart because the smarter you are, the easier it is to, the more capacity you have to manipulate and lie. Um, and it’s. And if you’re sensitive and smart and you can use that manipulation in lying, even if you’re even greater immediate advantage and long term disadvantage, um, now the, the father is more likely in that same situation to say, excuse me, um, you have a job to do. I mean, you can, you can have your ice cream, uh, but you can’t have your eyes come into you finish your piece, you know that that’s the deal.

And you know, the, the kid might yell and say, Oh, you’re so mean. Mom’s not like you are. And Dad’s response is oftentimes, well, you can continue to complain and Gripe and whine and no ice cream tomorrow night either. Um, and so what the dad tends to teach the child inadvertently because most men are not conscious that they’re not conscious of this is that you have no option but to focus on finishing your phd and in order to get what you want to get, which is your ice cream, which is means that you are teaching the child postpone gratification a to B, not an that manipulation doesn’t work. And secondly, children raised by primarily by dads are only 15 percent likely to have adhd. Children raised primarily by moms are 30 percent likely to have adhd. One of the reasons you can see from that example is that the child with the father is forced to learn how to focus on doing what he or she needs to do to get what she or he wants that ice cream.

Whereas with the mother, the mother is far more likely to report a number of things. One is that she feels that child’s children are much more coercive to, she feels overwhelmed and she feels the m and she feels like she is always tried fighting with the child and so, and repeating herself. And so my dad doesn’t have to repeat himself, not just because of his voice. Many men with deeper so norris voices that are good for radio, uh, who do not, who do not have a teach that postpone gratification. They have children that also ignore them. So this is a very frustrating thing for many moms because many moms say, I don’t get it when I tell my son or daughter is something, I have to repeat it and repeat it and repeat it. And Dad says, if the dad says it once, and this really annoys divorced moms who are, who are looking at their husbands with a little bit of annoyance to begin with, and then they see that the children obey them with one, one, one statement, and, and, uh, and uh, ignore them.

And the mom is usually the single mum is usually so devoted. And so here’s she’s putting all our energy and psychic and juggling her life in such a, um, uh, an overwhelmed way and she’s feeling this lack of respect coming from her children. And that’s got to be so hurtful to her. And so, uh, what, what you have in that package there is when boys and girls don’t have that postpone gratification, that’s when the slippery slope begins. The slippery slope is they go to school and they don’t finish the ones without postpone gratification, do not finish their homework and they don’t, uh, they can rehearse in the way that they need to for a player or a violin or gymnastic event, or to be on the, on the basketball or football team. So their dreams, whatever that dream is almost always fails. And so the bigger the dream, the bigger the failure.

So the boy becomes very depressed. He’s not getting positive reinforcement from the, from the school, from his peers, um, from the parents are in proud at home. So that’s what tends to lead him into withdrawing into video games and then becoming addicted to some game he’s good at, um, and boys are three times more likely to be addicted to video games and girls are. And so then, then we go over to the, um, to, to the boy, girl time and boy the boy, your son, the male tends to find out pretty quickly that girls are not very interested in dealing and in dating losers. So again, he has to withdraw into pornography because pornography is basically access to a variety of attractive women without fear of rejection at a price you can afford. And um, and there is an enormous amounts as you just implied pornography, just type into the video into Google, um, you know, video game porn and you will see about a quarter million options come up for your son.

Um, and so you get a sense of a, then the sun becomes depressed and in worst case scenarios that depression leads to taking drugs, alcohol, and an even worst case scenarios to suicide. So boys between the ages of boys at the age of nine and girls at the age of nine are equally likely to commit suicide, but by the ages of 10 to 14, our son’s suicide rate is twice what girls is by the age of 15 to 19 four times what girls is and by the ages of 20 to 25, a five and a half to six times what girls is and so you get a sense of this enormous impact on boys especially who have this minimal or no father involvement, which often means minimal or no boundary enforcement, which leads to a lack of postpone gratification and that slippery slope.

When I watched you talk on your Tedx talk and I don’t have deep diving into your book, one of the things that you, you talked about, you know, it’s, you said, hey, there’s a boy crisis. And right away when I heard that, I thought it could be hyperbole, you know what I mean? It could be just a clever little phrase, but then as you dive into it, it’s a real problem. This is a real problem. And, and the reason why we had, I wanted to have you on the show is because we have so many business owners out there and so many parents out there that say those facts are not the kind of facts that I want to hear. But they’re true. I can’t. I can’t escape the facts. So Warren, you’re a phd from Nyu. You’ve been featured on Oprah, Larry King, you’ve written seven books.

What do I need to do? And I really want to focus the latter half of our interview on the action steps that I can take if I’m a mom or dad out there and I don’t want that to become my reality. And then Eric Chop out here. He’s a father, a father of a young lady, a aaa clay stairs here. As, as a father, I’ve looked to get your. I’d love to have you tell us what action steps we should take if actionable people, entrepreneurs want to solve the problem. And I’d like for clay stairs, we have to ask you a few questions as well as Mr Eric Chop. So we’re. What can I do out there? What, what could I do more and if I’m out there and I say I acknowledged this problem is dangerous, what do I need to do?

Yes. The good news is that part of my commitment and writing the boy crisis was that every single problem that I brought up that I had solutions for schools, solutions for a mom, solutions for dads, solutions for moms and dads in intact families and solutions for, for, for women who are bringing up children of single moms as well. And so it’s a really important question. So the first thing I’m going to put the responsibility on debts and that you need to find out what is the, what are the 10 major differences between dead style parenting and mom style parenting and why those 10 major differences need to be incorporated in a sort of checks and balances fashion. With the mom style parenting, so mom style parenting is very necessary, but almost every mom brings a protectiveness and, and nurturance and an empathy to her parenting style.

Moms don’t, and moms have read a great deal about that and they practice that very well. Um, what dads have haven’t learned to do is to say that rough housing that I’m doing actually has about seven or eight significant reasons for helping our children become more empathetic. That is, yes. Roughhousing increases empathy. It increases also the ability to distinguish between being assertive and aggressive. And so I’ll give you a little scenario on this just to end this. Just this is just one scenario at a mini. I’m the mom. Mom Sees Dad roughhousing and mom thinks to herself, oh my God, there’s just one more child I have to monitor their. Um, and yet she and she’s trying to restrain ourselves from doing the monitoring because she thinks all right, the kids are having a lot of fun with, with Dad, but I can see what’s happening here and it’s going to lead to one of two things.

Somebody is going into crying or somebody’s going to end up having his or her head back and banged in or both, and she’s about 100 percent likely to be right. And then she tells herself, feels guilty and she says I should have proactively stopped it before it got to that level. But I, again, I didn’t want to interfere with what dad was doing. Um, so, uh, she says, next time I will try to proactively stop it. And so that’s her inner dialogue. Dad is just doing his thing, roughhousing and sing to the kids are loving it. And um, and so, but here is what dad doesn’t explain that mom, that is a type of thing that every dad needs to know about his parenting style that, that he needs to present to mom. Um, let’s say the game is wrestling and the game is can the three children a pin down the dead before the dead pins down all three children together.

So dad throws the kids onto the couch and the kids jump off the couch and let’s say Johnny is the oldest child that we have Jimmy. And then we have jane youngest and Johnny Pushes site the site, Jimi and Jimi sort of elbows out, Jane and Jane gets really upset. And so I’m, the dad stops and says that Jimmy, you can’t just elbow out Jane and John, you got to be more sensitive to this aspect of, of Jimmy. You can’t just push them aside. And so, um, and then, and then so they stop roughhousing for a moment. They review the rules and then they returned or roughhousing and mom is watching and say, wait a minute, they just, you know, bumped each other, they just hurt each other. And you are now returning to the same process that led to the problem the minute ago. What is the matter with you?

Um, but again, she’s tried to keep her mouth shut and dad says nothing but just continues, uh, and no one understands that. So then Dad’s, um, uh, then then the, the kids agree to the rules that dad sets. But in the excitement of, of continuing to rough house and wanting to be the person that bins dead, dead down and gets the credit, uh, they push the kids, they push their brother or their sister aside again, and somebody hurts themselves. Somebody starts crying and mom knows this is going to happen and dad doesn’t seem to mind that this happens. But what he does is he says, okay, no more rough housing til tomorrow night. And so let’s deconstruct that to understand what that is doing that he doesn’t even know he’s doing a first. He’s requiring the children to be empathetic, not by telling the children to be empathetic to Jane’s needs are to John’s needs, uh, but rather by requiring them to do it by stopping the rough house if they don’t do it.

Secondly, he’s returning to the rough house that created a problem because it’s only by returning to it that it gives the children an experience of emotional intelligence under fire. That is anyone can agree to not hurt their brother or sister. But when they get really excited and they both want to win, that’s when people become greedy. And forget their vows and so dad is giving them more than a lecturer. He’s giving them an emotion, an experience of how to be emotionally intelligent and he’s requiring each brother and sister to think of each other’s needs because if they don’t, they don’t get what they want, more rough housing and he’s requiring them to think a seed that understand the difference between being assertive, what am I allowed to do to, to edge out my brother and my sister and what am I not allowed to do and what do, what compensations, what extra privileges or need?

What extra allowances do I need to give my sister because she’s younger, um, and my brother the same way. That would not be, that do not need to be given to me because I’m older and bigger and stronger. All of these things you can outline in a textbook, but nobody gets it unless they have experience after experience of it. And if dad doesn’t return to that rough housing, he doesn’t give them that experience of emotional intelligence under fire. He doesn’t teach them that boundary line between where assertiveness morphs into aggressiveness and he doesn’t teach them how to be empathetic, just that he has to be empathetic and sit by stopping the roughhousing and not repeating his command. He doesn’t, he, um, he lets the children know that there are consequences that they will pay if they don’t focus on being that empathetic or being assertive.

Mom is still watching this and she’s saying, I am so angry that dad only has to say things once and the kids obey him. I have to repeat myself over and over and over again, as I was mentioning before, now repeating myself that, um, the uh, and the kids still don’t get it. And so that’s the type of communication that dads need to share with moms so that moms get a sense that this is responsible parenting. Not this one more child. I have to monitor parenting. What you just said, the word, I believe you said the word Electra, is

that correct?

Electric emotional intelligence under fire.

Emotional intelligence under fire. Okay. I just, there’s, you aren’t given us so much knowledge and I’m just taking copious notes here too. I’m writing down a tan and it’s amazing because you have been studying this as a phd from Nyu. How many hours worn would you estimate you’ve spent studying the boy crisis? I mean if you had to guesstimate because you are a wealth of knowledge.

Well, thank you. My wife would say that first of all, the answer is 11 years of research on this issue. I’ve been researching male female issues since 19. Sixty nine is on all my life. Oh my career life. Um, and so, uh, but this, uh, last 11 years had been focused in my writing, part of my life has been focused completely on doing the boy crisis and the last two or three years I’ve pretty much pushed everything aside and focus completely on, on, on, on, on writing the boy crisis and doing the research for it and making sure also that the research was accurate. I mean, almost all of the things that I got, I, I initially got from secondary sources and so I had to go to the primary source and, you know, find out that, uh, so I’ll give you one amazing piece of info.

Uh, find out, for example, that go back to the original journal. So one of the things I found in one of the journals that I had to check out was that when boys and girls don’t have fathers, by the age of nine, they already have shorter telomeres. Telomeres that are 14 percent shorter. Now, for the people who don’t know a telomeres, our telomeres are inside of. Every cell cells are constantly reproducing the, the longer the telomeres are, the more they have genes that can help you prevent diseases like cancer or heart disease. And so if you have shorter, 14 percent shorter telomeres by the age of nine, that predicts approximately according to pediatrics, so 14 percent shorter life expectancy by the age of nine. Boys and girls with minimal or no father involvement already have 14 percent shorter telomeres. But boys have then again, 40 percent shorter telomeres in comparison to their sisters, so it gives you a sense of how the damage of lack of father involvement on our sisters, but also a sense of the proportionally greater challenge, um, damage to our sons that 40 percent additional damage that it does to our sons. And that’s just one of, again, the 70 examples of how minimal or no father involvement it magnifies the boy crisis.

Well, I’ll tell you this, I’ll say this clay stairs. This guy has worked at his camp with thousands of kids. I don’t know the exact number club you’ve probably worked with, maybe close to tens of thousands of kids who’ve gone through the shepherds fold camp. Yeah, we’ve just gone over about 22,000. You’ve also been a school

teacher, so I give you the floor and worn real quick. Just so you know, I know you’re a phd and you know, you know a lot. And so clay stares loves to ask politically divisive and religious questions. Pain are cast into the corner. So. Okay. Clay, what’s your question for Mr Morgan?

I’m very happy to handle any question.

Yes. Uh, well actually, Matt and I, I’ve got a ton. Three primary questions. I don’t know if we’re going to be able to get through these, but I’m just going to hit them here. First of all, my, my wife and I, we have a nonprofit organization that she runs and in one of the programs is a mentoring program for children in elementary school in a very impoverished school district and she, the mentors that she has are all females, but what is something that, that I can go home this evening and talk to her about like one, what’s the one power move that I can talk to her about that hunt. Make sure you talk with your mentors to do this with your kids. Just one because it’s important that it’ll blow them up. What is one thing

you too, if you don’t mind? One is getting the kids involved with like with male mentors so that they can respect males and to even more important than being mentored by a male is finding a boy that they can mentor the progress that is made by boys is greater when they are a mentor. Then even when they are being mentored, both are important, but when a boy is a mentor to a younger boy, he gets that emotional attachment to feeling that everything he does, he has to sort of. He sees through the eyes of how that boy he’s mentoring would be disappointed in him or proud of him and therefore he does and he doesn’t want to let that boy down. And then the second and third thing say third and fourth thing I’ll say is get your children involved with cub scouts and get your children involved in a faith based community in which a male minister or priest or rabbi gets together groups of boys and those boys can hear each other’s perspectives and get beyond their masks so they don’t feel so lonely and sad and depressed and withdrawn.

Wow. That is fantastic. Thank you. And I’m going to go to, I’m moving to number two really quickly here. Number two, um, how being a dad of two daughters, uh, of course, I’m just feeling the weight of fatherhood. I don’t know about you guys. All of a sudden it’s like, holy cow, holy man, important. Yeah, villainous thing. But, uh, being the father of two daughters, how can I talk to my daughters? One is 18, one is 26. How can I talk with them about how to choose a boy to move close to and begin a relationship with?

Yes. Have them, I’m going to say, have them go to the portion of the crisis built that as opposed to have you tell them directly because as you already know, it’s a prophet is never a profit close to home.

Listen to me.

They always pay attention to something that they read. And so, uh, the core issue that every doctor needs to know and every son needs to know is that both sexes are attracted to the members of the other sex who are the least effective at being able to love them as well. Um, and so can we, could you say that one more time, both sexes are attracted to the members of the other sex with the least capable of loving them. Well that is we, boy, we girls are attracted to the more successful men, um, and they want um, and the more successful men are often learning skills to be successful at work that often distanced them from being able to be successful in love.

There it is. This just in from our Home Office because that right there explains the clay Clark experience was this huge award. I have been able to provide massive income for myself since the age of 16 and it is hard for me. The hardest part for me has been able to learn how to connect with my wife because it’s like the skills I have that allow me to be successful in business are not at all related to the skills they need to be a successful, has quite the opposite in some cases I’ve read war and that was profound. Yeah, that was great. That was great. Thank you so much. And then finally, number three, as I toss this out here, how about this, I am involved with the Church and I am a mentor, a developer, a trainer at heart. How, what can a church, what can a group of guys in a church do to help this boy crisis? What are like one or two practical steps that we can do to help this crisis beyond, beyond just beyond being in our homes? What is it

can really get a caring and loving male, um, pastor, minister and minister, a priest or rabbi to organize a group of about seven or eight boys, um, ideally ones that are having maybe problems or challenges as Shaunti bridge did this with a group called ever forward over to Oakland. And um, and the, and he just sat around with the boys and ask them to do, for example, to, to. He gave them each a mask and said, how do you present yourself to the world? And they wrote themselves. They wrote to the mask how they presented themselves to the world. And then on the back of the mass they wrote, how do you really feel? What are your fears? And they wrote what their fears were and then they shared their presentation outwardly and their presentation that they were behind the mask and they found that all the boys so that everybody is hiding who they really are and that just allowed each of the boys to not feel so alone and that allowed them to open up and realize that they had. They were a support group for each other, that they could be honest with each other and that is so much of the battle handled right there. Now, almost all of these boys were from an under underprivileged background, almost a high, very high percentage. I’m African American and Hispanic and almost all of them were ready getting ready to drop out of school. And it turned out that, uh, with that type of support, 100 percent graduated and more than 95 percent went on to either college or a trade school or some other type of advanced education.

Very helpful. Thank you. Eric. Chop your, the cohost of the thrive time show. You’ve been on the show for multiple years of. You’ve met a lot of clients. You’re also a father, you’ve coached a lot of business owners who are parents. What question do you have for Mr Warren Farrell? Warren, I wanted to ask you for the entrepreneurs and business owners out there, if you’ve got employees who have figured out this empathy button, if you will, and they’re used to playing this card to get what they want. How do you mentor a grownup or kind of manage a grownup out of this manipulative mindset? Good one.

Yes. Very good. Uh, first of all, make sure all the incentives are in the right place, that they know that you were, that you and that you set boundaries. You don’t set boundaries that are more than what you can enforce, that you enforce every boundary that you set and, and that there and that you’re not afraid of. You know, if they, if they have complaints or they’re gonna they are gonna be you, you feel that they’re going to. Well, first of all, obviously hiring the very carefully, ideally hiring more independent contractors and employees because employees are oftentimes desirous of, um, of benefits that are oriented toward being entitled to something. And very often people who are independent contractors are more oriented toward making it on their own so you have less of a victim personality. I’m involved in that type of, um, a employee, but more important, but the most important single thing is that in addition to being, you know, kind and flexible and listening to their issues and, and setting aside time to listen to them as well, that when you do talk through with them what you need and you come to an agreement with their input that then you enforced the boundary and don’t just, um, you know, sort of will let other employees see that what you say really doesn’t count.

So when you, when you tell them not to put their hand on the stove, make sure it’s on for when they do touch the stove and it burns. Now, Warren, for the sake of time and respect for your time. Um, I’d like to wrap up today’s interview with, with two questions. Um, one, why should everybody go out there? I know it’s a self serving question, but I mean, seriously, you’ve years, decades of your life studying this. Why should everybody go out there and purchase one copy of your newest book boy crisis?

Well, I suggests they purchased one copy of a purchase.

Nice one.

It’s the entrepreneur in me and that was just said as a joke largely, but um, because, um, if you’re, if you have a daughter, she needs to know what boys are going through and what, and what their way of looking at the world is. And because empathizing with that boy will lead her to something that boys get very minimally from each other, which is a type of empathy that boys today don’t feel either from each other or from girls. If your son is a boy, um, he then will be able to look at the types of things that you do that may, he may think is mean like the, among the things we’ve talked about, like the postpone gratification and so on and see it from a, Oh, my dad really does care for me. This argument, we got into this, this punishment. He gave me this consequences that he gave me.

This is because he loves me and that helps him feel loved and therefore motivated. Um, and so those are just, um, so, uh, uh, secondly, spend time with the boy crisis. Looking at the sections on how to structure a family dinner nights, family dinner nights are very important. Take a take time to look if you’re a single mom as to what are the best things that you can do if you’re a single mom to be able to help your boy either get involved with things like cub scouts and faith based communities or to get the father but reinvolved with the family or to get good male role models in instead of the father. How to deal with a stepfather is very much outlined there. And if you’re a divorced, what are the four must do that, that if you pay attention to you, have a reasonably good chance that your son can grow up as effectively as an, as an intact family. But if you don’t, if you miss one of them, um, the chances are fairly good. Your son will be somebody who will not be able to make good use of his intelligence and his sensitivity as you would like.

My final question for you is why do marriages fail and countries that succeed? You’ve written extensively about this, but could you kind of paraphrase for us, why do marriages fail and countries that succeed?

Yes. Marriages fail in countries that succeed to along with the emphasis on in countries that succeed to a large degree because they’re are much more allowed to as much more permission for divorce. There is, there are countries that are not successful. Survival is dependent upon the the marriages staying together that the real question behind the question is why do marriages failed so much to begin with? We don’t want to have laws that just require people to be married unhappily. The real trick is people will often say, well, marriages fall apart. They could be because of lack of sex or they fall apart because of lack of money where they fall apart because of differences with the children. Wrong, wrong. Enrolling marriages fell apart, not because it’s sex money or children, but the way we communicate about sex money or children and and biologically no one is prepared to the Achilles heel of all human beings is our inability to handle personal criticism without becoming defensive. So I do couples communication workshops all around the country because I’ve found that the most important single thing to prevent the boy crisis is having good communication in marriages so that children have good role models so that parents don’t break up from each other, leaving children without usually a dead a or a that or feeling abandoned on some level. Um, and so you prevent the boy crisis best by having a learning how to communicate effectively so that your marriage doesn’t stay together because of legislation, but it stays together because of good communication.

Warren, I appreciate you for taking a more than a decade to, to research and put your time and energy into this book, the crisis. I appreciate you for taking more than 45, almost 50 minutes out of your schedule for, for hopping on the thrive time show. And for the listeners out there that want to learn more about you, obviously everybody knows how to Google your name, Warren Farrell, but what’s the best place for all of our listeners to find out more about you, your books, and your, the, the message you’re communicating to the masses?

I said, go on either Warren Farrell.com. They gave it to me very easily because I couldn’t remember anything more complicated. Um, and so it’s a, the feral is f as in Frank, a R, r e l l.com. There’s also a website called the boy crisis. Um, and you know, if you’re getting the book, if you’re, if you’re, if money is an issue, then just go to Amazon. They have a right now at a 33 percent discount. Or if you’re, you know, if you have a little bit more income than support an independent bookstore.

Warren, I appreciate you so much for being on the show. I know chop chop and I clay stairs now. We’ve all learned a lot from you today. Again, we appreciate your time and hope you have a blessed day, my friend.

Thank you. Your guys’ energy are great. It’s a wonderful questions and, um, I love the, uh, the playfulness that is integrated with that as really a pleasure for me.

Hey, take care.

Bye. Bye.

Thrive nation. Vision without execution is hallucination. Now that you know that there is a problem, it’s up to you to do something about it. My name is Clay Clark. That’s Marshall Morris, business coach. And now without any further ado, three, two, one, boom.