Parental Roles
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There is nothing you'll do in life that's more challenging, difficult and rewarding than being a parent. Nothing with greater highs or lower lows.

Worthwhile meaning in your life is going to be found in the voluntary adoption of responsibility. Voluntary self-sacrifice, that's the spirit of the functional psyche, family and community. What does it mean to be a father? What does it mean to be a mother? You need to know very clearly what it is that you can do for your children in order to help them live a life that's adventurous and responsible.

I've distilled the decades of my experience as a researcher and clinical psychologist into the lessons every striving mother or father needs to learn. If you've ever thought about becoming a parent, or are a parent already, this series is for you.

Hello. I sat down recently with many moms and dads to personally discuss the situations they were facing with their children. Our 13-year-old, we spoiled the heck out of him. My daughter came to tell us that her classmates were bullying her. The question for me becomes, when do I pick him up and when do I make him pick himself up? What lessons can you derive from today's discussion? How do you operate effectively as a father and as a mother in today's world?

Well, you could say if you wanted to play sex stereotype that a mother secures and a father encourages. You could say that a father is radically on the side of who the child could become and a mother is more radically on the side of who the child is. And that's a nice dynamic because when you're dealing with a child, you have to be happy and grateful for who they are.

and encouraging them to be the person they could become. Now, I think it's a mistake for the mother always to be the nurturer and the father always to be the person pushing forward. Both parents should play both roles, but that's a good way of considering the sex differentiation. When it comes to nurturing and snuggling, it's more my role as opposed to when it's time to play or go outside or...

do things like that, that's more Nathan's department, which I find for me it is difficult to play with my kids. How do I sit down and play with his trucks and not feel like I should be doing something else without feeling like I should be washing dishes, I should be putting things away.

In all likelihood, you're going to be a mother of small children for a much shorter time than you think and for a much smaller fraction of your life than you imagine. While you have little kids, time sort of slows and it seems like it's always been that way and it's always going to be that way and that's not the case. You have little kids for a very short period of time and it is a major mistake not to notice that and to appreciate it.

It's the pathway to a future with the least regrets to understand and be grateful for the opportunity that you have to care for your children while they're little and to be as grateful as you possibly can for that because it really is a privilege. Just being a parent, nothing I was ever interested in prior to this really is worthy of my time or concern at this moment.

I don't know if that will last forever. And I'm curious about how things like my career, the things I have been doing outside of the house, relationships, other things I'm involved in, now work in to our lives. And I'm very open to the answer being, you sacrifice it. In the first few months of life, a child has to be in very close contact with his or her mother.

It's virtually impossible to give a true infant too much attention. In fact, I don't even know if it is possible. As the child becomes autonomous, can start doing things on his or her own, then you have to pull back in lockstep with the child's independence. And you might say, well, how do you know how fast to pull back?

You really take your cues from the child. A mother or a parent acts as a zone of security and predictability and care for the child. And so the child uses the mother, let's say, as a place of safety and will come back for comfort, for attention, and then will go out into the world and play and interact until they hit an obstacle and then they'll retreat to the mother.

to be that island of stability, security and encouragement. And so then there's a continual dance between outward movement and retreat that the mother anchors. And eventually the child is capable of completely autonomous life. And then if you've handled that properly and you've been the proper balance of security and encouragement, the child won't leave permanently because you'll establish autonomy.

an adult relationship with them and then a relationship with their children. And then you get to have your cake and eat it too. And that's a good deal for everybody. If you're willing to lose your child as they adventure outward, you'll gain them back in an adult relationship. How did you overindulge, do you think exactly? Well, we just gave him everything. Everything. Okay. We spoiled the heck out of him.

Because I grew up with nothing. And Jamie grew up in a household where things were love. And we just don't want our five-year-old to follow in the same footsteps. Like, see that as an example to grow up as.

I've seen mothers who are at the beck and call of their three-year-old son in particular. That's a bad idea. Your son, your daughter for that matter, isn't little god emperor of the universe and shouldn't conceptualize himself or herself that way. That's a good pathway to narcissism. Your best pathway forward as a mother is to not do for your child anything that your child can do for themself.

That means doing up their shoes or putting on their clothes and cleaning up their rooms and helping to set the table when they're old enough to help set the table. One of the mistakes that parents make is they'll step in and do things quickly for the child instead of letting them learn. Now, at any given time, it's faster for you to dress your child, but you don't want to be dressing them when they're seven.

Everything you can do to bring the child into the realm of adult responsibility is exactly the sort of thing that you would do if you were reasonable and you were trying to boost what people now so casually call self-esteem. There's nothing that gives a person more esteem than to see that they're useful and necessary and that that's real. How are you doing? I'm good. What's your name? Micah. Micah. Nice to meet you, Dr. Peterson. Good to meet you, Micah.

So what brings you here today? Well, I have been engaged for a couple of weeks and my fiance already has a two-year-old son, which means that I'm going to be an instant father to a toddler, which raises a few questions for me. What is a father? Is it something that you are or is it a role that you can step into like I'm

about to. Yeah, well, I guess you're going to find out the answer to that question, aren't you? Yes. Can you become a father? Is that a rule you take on? I think it's always a rule you take on. Being a father is a relationship and a relationship is something you have to develop. Any time that you spend with your child one-on-one, teaching them, talking to them, playing with them, listening to them, walking with them is encouragement because

They need to learn to be adults. And your children need to see you modeling how to be an engaged adult for them. Honest and committed pursuit of a worthwhile goal. That's a good way of thinking about what a father should model. Voluntary adventure. That's another encapsulation of the masculine role. The establishment of a vision.

the commitment to its pursuit, resilience in the face of failure, faith in the future, service to your family, your community, protection from the catastrophes of life and care of the most vulnerable. That's masculinity in a nutshell. That's why the shepherd, for example, in old religious stories is a model of masculinity. Ancient shepherds, they kept the wolves and the

lions at bay and took care of the most vulnerable. And that's what men who are worthy of the name strive for. Don't assume that there's a pathway

to being a father, just to have a relationship with the kid. And that'll unfold at its own speed, and that is what happens with fathers anyways. You've got to get to know your kid, and you do that by spending time with them. And just because children know less about the world at the experiential level doesn't mean they're not paying attention, and it certainly doesn't mean that they're stupid.

They're not stupid and they're watching and you can talk to them. Now, you have to talk to a two-year-old about the things that a two-year-old can understand, but if you have a genuine conversation with them, then you're communicating and that's just steady all the way through.

There's no difference, technically speaking, between being concerned with yourself in the narrow sense, say concerned with your own pleasure, concerned with your own status. There's no difference between that and suffering. The answer to that isn't to stop being self-conscious because that's not something you can voluntarily control. The answer is to note that meaning in your life is going to be found in adoption of

responsibility for other people and responsibility for the future. Shouldering that load makes you productive and useful, but it also provides you with the sustaining meaning that helps you manage yourself even through times of trouble.

For the past couple of months, he's been calling me daddy. Oh, yeah. What do you think of that? It makes me feel a lot more pressure than I was comfortable with at first. Yeah. But even though I did feel the pressure, I also felt the conviction that I'd already decided this was the right thing to do. Like you said, you had doubts. What are your doubts? I am worried about...

it being too much at once. I'm worried about feeling invaded and claustrophobic. Okay. You know, people think, well, I'm taking on this responsibility. I'm sacrificing my freedom. It's like, well, first of all, freedom to do what? To be self-centered and miserable? What? And lonesome?

That's all the freedom I want. Self-centered, miserable and lonesome. So then you take on the hypothetical responsibility of a child, but the thing is they pay you. There's data on this too. People who have little kids take more pleasure in the things they do with their little kids than single people do doing the same things.

Kids look at the world through fresh eyes. Everything that you do with a little kid is a new thing for the kid and you get to see that and that's a really good deal. And you can become a master of those little adventures that you go on with your kids. If you learn to do it right...

There won't be anything that you'd rather do because it's a very rare adult who is as much joy to be with than a child who's well-disciplined and playfully accompanying you.

In conclusion, what lessons can you derive from today's discussion? Lessons for motherhood. Hold them close, but let them go. Encourage your children to go out into the world so they become competent and productive and happy and secure, but be confident that when the need arises, they'll come to you for the care that only as their mother you can provide. Don't worship your child. Care for them, love them, but don't turn them into narcissists.

Lessons for fatherhood. Become the man your children want to imitate. There's very little that you can do that's more important as a man than to provide the model for responsible, adventurous adulthood to your children. Embrace responsibility. Gain purpose.

You're giving up what's often nothing more than juvenile hedonism to pursue something of much greater significance, the meaning that you find in the voluntary adoption of responsibility. So I'd like to offer you a sample homework assignment, so to speak. Sit and write a little bit, a couple of paragraphs about three things that your father did particularly well and do the same with your mother.

Write down as well three things that you think they might have done better and then give some thought while you're writing to how you could capitalize on the positive things that your father and your mother taught you and how you could rectify the things that were less than optimal. I hope that that's helpful in dealing with the problems that arise in the future.

My new Daily Wire Plus series, Parenting, brings what I've learned in decades of research and clinical practice to the concerns of real mothers and fathers. Watch Parenting exclusively on Daily Wire, May 25th. Go to dailywireplus.com today to subscribe.