Jordan Peterson: How to Deal with Fatherlessness and Bad Fathers

the most common story I tend to hear from conflicted youth is that they write they're raised in a single-family home usually with a mom daddy's there on the picture and alcoholic whatever-whatever to write her so we have this child who is trying to seek ways to make himself healthy and empower himself in a ways that a healthy father should have done so you know between the formative years of like one to four so I think you know I'm going with this how let's say for someone who born without like a good father figure where would they go out in the world or like what four spheres of influence would they try to expose themselves to to like gain access to that fountain of health and knowledge that a father that a good father figure should have provide them to in the first place okay well partly I mean certainly to some degree a good mother can provide that right to some degree although it's hard for one person to be everything right you know and I think one of the conundrums that face women and this is a tough one and this is why I think women are higher and trade agreeableness and higher and trade negative emotion is that you know the primary problem that a woman has with an infant is why not throw it out a window because it's very annoying right I mean it's it's there all the time it's constant demand it's absolutely constant demand tremendous dependency and so a woman has to be tilted towards mercy that's how it looks to me and especially during it's so important during the especially the first year when children are so unbelievably vulnerable and so I think it's very difficult for women to be merciful like that and to make the shift to encouraging disciplinarian I think that's a very difficult thing for people to do simultaneously although you know people people I'm not saying that women are always only merciful and men are always only encouraging disciplinarians but things do sort themselves out to some degree like that and I think also the biochemical transformations that accompany pregnancy and childbirth and and lactation also tilt a mother towards that as well she has to really love that little thing right it's it's number one no matter what it demands and and then telling it what to do and making sure it's behaving properly that's that's a whole different issue no but the kids who lack fathers I mean first of all they can find that to some degree in their friends and that's often look father this boys do in particular they they go into gangs and they Jenner the missing men masculinity in the game well that's not so good because like what the hell do they know well they don't know anything right they're just stupid kids and they're like 15 years old and their testosterone is pumping and they're trying to get the hell away from their mother which is what they're supposed to do and and they're not in the right position to exercise any authority over themselves so that's that's not good they can find it in education they can find it in books they can find it movies they can find it in sports heroes and so forth because the image of the father is fragmented and distributed among the community but it's very very difficult to not have a father and you know one of the things that we're doing in our society which I think is I think it's absolutely appalling is that we're making the case that all families are equal it's like sorry no wrong then there's no empirical data supporting that proposition by the way it's much better for kids to have two parents know who those parents are that's a whole different issue okay and if I could just uh one more thing um how would you ask that question to let's see a daughter who was raised on her father because she would obviously have different ways to find those fragments of her missing father than like a boy would instead because obviously they're raised differently at least they should have been well I think it's the same issue you know I mean I think that another danger that emerges mrs. Freud's of course famous observation is that you know if there's mom and child were father and child that relationship can get a little closer than it should and then the Lions get blurry and mixed and I'm not saying that that happens to everyone obviously but but it's still a danger that that's inherent in this situation their thrust together too tightly without sufficient resources and so the responsibility has to be distributed more and like I really do think that it's the sign of the degeneration of a society when that when when single parenthood becomes anything approximating the norm it's not a good idea and part of the reason I believe that and I think this has to do with the overwhelming selfishness of modern life is that marriage isn't for the people who are married it's for the children obviously and like if you can't handle that grow the hell up zero at now I mean seriously seriously once you once you once you have kids it is not about you period now that doesn't mean it isn't about you at all but that just seems so self-evident to me I can't believe that anybody would even would even question it oh it's oh yes well I'm certainly aware of that yes it's question it's almost illegal to question it now you know to to or illegal to make the set of propositions that I'm making so that's the best I can do what kind of relationship do you have with your father your real father it's often ambivalent right because the Asian elements of him that encouraged you hopefully because without the encouragement of your father man the world is a dismal place it's very difficult to be a courageous person unless you have your father in body and spirit behind you it's very demoralizing like it really kills people not to have their mother they just don't recover from that but and and I think people can recover from a fragmented father relationship but it's the next worst thing you know because if your father rejects you or doesn't form a relationship with you it's as if the spirit of civilization has left you outside the walls as of littleworth it's very difficult for people to recover from that so the father should be an encouraging force but can be a tyrannical and crushing force and so that's very that's a very difficult thing to get right partly because if you're my son then I should impose the highest standards of behavior on you and I should always be judging what you're doing I should be judging it with with the aim of making the best in you come forward but but getting that balance exactly right is very difficult and so it's easy to for a father to swing too much into judgment let's say and of course mothers can play this rule too to swing too far into the domain of judgment and to be too harsh and to the degree that the father has his own pathologies he's gonna do that imperfectly you know he might be someone who's who's the father who devours his son because he's jealous of the new possibility the new potential that the struggle for for attention and love from the mother or from the other children in the family there's all sorts of things that can go terribly wrong so that's the father as wise King and that's another symbol that's been lost I would say to a massive degree in modern universities because all we're taught is to tear that down and and to not even notice that it manifests itself everywhere especially in the universities which are like there is close to an ideal environment as you could as human beings have ever been able to create it's as simple as that and if you can't be grateful for for this structure of the University with all its imperfections then then you're completely blind to this element of the archetype and that's the opposite of it that's the Sun that devours the king that devours his own son that's a tyrant you know that's like the mother who's too overprotective it's the male version of that and the mother that's too overprotective says I'll never let anything happen to you it's like well maybe you actually want to have something happen to you you know it's a bit of an all-inclusive statement it's like no I'm going to make you strong so any number of things can happen to you and when you're when you need some care I'll be there but otherwise like out into the world with you that's the right attitude and for the father it's like get your bloody act together but I'm on your side it's because not because I want to destroy you or demean you or push you down in the dominance hierarchy but because I want the best in you to emerge and so you need standards it's like what are you doing wasting your life there's way more than that to you get your act together and bring it out and that's a message that people really want to hear if they have any sense at all and generally they do want to hear it so you know I was talking I've been talking to a lot of people recently as perhaps you know and what I was talking to one of the leaders of the Conservatives this morning and they're they're asking me about the person was asking me about Bill c16 but more specifically about talking to young people because the conservative leadership struggle is going on right now I've been talking to a bunch of them and I said well look one of the things you could do for young people that no one's doing is to talk to them about responsibility because everyone talks to young people about rights it's like we need our rights it's like oh god how many rights do you need you know really like you have more privileges than any people who have ever lived anywhere well it's so dull to hear that's so dull it's so pathetic and and what would you call it it's so demeaning that you have to be protected and have your rights it's like I said there's a huge marketplace for responsibility that's what you want to talk to young people about it's like get your act together and do something worth with your life for the first time my entire adult life the Conservatives actually have something to sell young people right they could sell them responsibility it's like well why because that's where meat life has meaning with responsibility the more responsibility you take on the more meaning your life has and the the higher degree of responsibility that you agree voluntarily to try to bear the richer your life will be and no one's ever told that and it's the case you know it's like you have you have four kids say well that's plenty of responsibility you're gonna have meaning it's gonna be rough you know cuz it's complicated you have a complicated job and you try to help the careers of the people around you you try to solve tough problems and AIDS suffering and do all of that it's like its weight its responsibility but it's there's glory in it there's real glory in it there's deep meaning in it and and and young people are starving for that because no one ever tells them that it's like you're way more than you think man stand up do something difficult do something difficult in heroic right burst out of your barns it's like that's a good message it's a necessary message because we have to be more than we are because if we if we aren't we're not going to survive

Channel: PhilosophyInsights

Views: 641,920

Keywords: Jordan b. Peterson, Single mother, father, fatherless, home, parenting, growing up, encourage, mercy, psychology, psychologist, love, loving, behave, authority, raising, raise, responsibility, society, parenthood, selfish, marriage, men, women, wise king, rights, protection

Id: tQ1ln0Wy1fk

Length: 10min 50sec (650 seconds)

Published: Thu Dec 12 2019