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Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

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Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#731
post #470

What's interesting is that I recently watched The Red Pill Documentary. I recall when it was released that the director, Cassie Jaye a self professed feminist was pilloried absolutely everywhere for giving a voice to Mens Rights Activists. The actual documentary is quite milquetoast. What it is, is her engaging with the ideas around how in some ways men are disadvantaged in modern society. It's fascinating to me that…

I feel the same about "The Red Pill" movie and couldn't see how the criticism aligned with the reality. What I do see often is that entrenched actors and groups will attack, with specially reserved ardor, any artist or production taking a position of understanding and shared interest between groups or actors that are meant to be at odds. With this movie, the critics could have said the filmmaker, Alex Lee Moyer, avoi…

Don't think Alex Lee Moyer had a thing to do with the Red Pill.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#732

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly what my father did. He took parenting classes at the library, because he wanted to learn more and didn't think that just because he considered himself successful in business and life, he would necessarily understand pedagogy. To that, I am eternally grateful to him. It's very hard for people to swallow their pride and admit humility, to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts. I have an immense amou…

> to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts Seeing this repeated in this thread. Who are these "experts"? What makes them "experts"? Is there some kind of track record I can look at?

In my case experts are people who raised well adjusted children and are still happily married! It can even be your own parents as much as people (very prideful) don’t want to admit that.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#733
post #477

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People aren't having enough children. Every extra hurdle is going to reduce the number of people who end up parents. > Potentially break the cycles of bad parenting You can't break cycles of bad parenting, because they are 2nd order effects of cycles of trauma. And cycles of trauma have been a fundamental part of human civilization since we've existed. We absolutely should teach compassion, good parenting 101s and ba…

> People aren't having enough children. By what metric? Economics? Economics, ironically, is the reason I don't have more kids. My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house. I truly don't know how people that aren't that far below us on the resources / income scale have any hope of comfortable…

>My family is doing, what I would consider, "quite well", but we'd still be pretty fucked with one more mouth to feed, the need for a larger car and possibly larger house.

What do you consider "quite well"? Does your car have a backseat? Does your home have more than one bedroom? If so, you don't need larger of either.

Yes, there are some sacrifices to having a family. Nothing in life is free. The problem is that it sounds like you don't want to your lifestyle hindered by a child. That's fine, but saying you "can't" is untrue. People much poorer than you are doing it all around the world.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#735

Here's a thought and I am writing this as I don my kevlar flame retardant jacket. For most things in life where we could impact the lives of other people materially - driving is a good example - we ensure some minimal amount of training before letting people perform that activity. However with parenting we have nothing and the result it seems is we pay with a ton more resources downstream in the way of therapy, deten…

> How about some minimal coaching so that all parents are aware of the state of the art in child psychology What is "state of the art" in psychology? A bunch of irreproducible papers?

Yes exactly that. Appeal to authority.

Many people have such broken relationships with their parents that they refuse to believe their parents can offer them good advice.

Before they take a parenting class, they might be better served taking a counseling class to repair their relationship with their own parents.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#736

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's exactly what my father did. He took parenting classes at the library, because he wanted to learn more and didn't think that just because he considered himself successful in business and life, he would necessarily understand pedagogy. To that, I am eternally grateful to him. It's very hard for people to swallow their pride and admit humility, to say "I don't know" and listen to the experts. I have an immense amou…

I really wish schools taught humility. As a new parents we got tons of books as gifts on pregnancy and baby's first year or two. But then it ended. I continue to buy books on parenting, child psychology, etc. But sadly it seems once baby turns toddler, most parents are done with learning. One of the most common toxic phrase I keep hearing from these parents is I was raised this way, look I turned out to be fine. Of c…

Ok but if hubris is profitable, why couldn't or wouldn't a private school teach it?

There's alot of people pissing on public schools, whether to sabotage the general public or have special non-standard curriculum only available in private schools, I have no idea.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#737

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I just know it's gonna be the patriarchy/masculinity, right? I don't think a single person blames masculinity for mens problems. Did you by any chance hear the word toxic masculinity and assume all masuclinity was under attack because that is not the same? Also, ngl your comment reads like "ohh why am I bleeding, without checking with a doctor I am gonna guess the answer is the knife lodged in my back, right?" Like…

Name a positive masculine trait, something which men tend to have and women tend not to (should go without saying - it's not a "masculine" trait otherwise). I look forward to your rendition of 4'33".

> Name a positive masculine trait, something which men tend to have and women tend not to

This question is wrong. I mean, in the sense that a valid english sentence does not mean a valid question. See for example "which colour is the number 4" or "how many notes does the capital of france have". They are syntactically valid questions but have no real meaning.

There are no masculine traits that men have and women dont, that is not what masculinity even means. What traits, behaviours and modes of expression are related to masculinity (in western culture) are things such as leadership, honor, aggresion, competitiveness. There is a long history as to why this is the case, some cultural, some historical some arguable biological essentialist. But just because testosterone makes you more aggresive, and more competitive does not mean women are not, or can not be, competitive or ambitious.

In the same veing that feminine traits like emotional regulation, teammwork, compassion etc are not something men do not have. It is not like men only do individual sports and women only do team sports.

in other words, pitting them as exclussionary is framing the entire conversation wrong, and therefore even haviing this as an assumption "should go without saying - it's not a "masculine" trait otherwise" makes the entire question wrong.

From false you can prove anything, is an old adage in formal logic F -> any(P) . but you cannot, and should not form a basis of "masculine traits are those not expressed by women", but "masculine traits are the cultural aspects related to masculinity in a specific culture". Now you can define masculinity and time period and culture and get an answer. But the definition of "not expressed by women" is just wrong from the offset.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#738

We don't need a critical theory of boyhood, we just need to stop institutionally empowering people who hate their dads. I know many good men, and the defining characteristic of every single one of them is that regardless of who their father was, they accept him, and by extension they accept themselves. If you are still mad at him or have contempt for him, I recommend considering how it's manifesting in your beliefs a…

I'm late to the party on this, but the first thing that comes to mind with your comment is a comedian by the name of Taylor Tomlinson. She used to be a great balance of young, self-deprecating humor while mixing a healthy amount of family drama in. Her recent tour, however, was just depressing. Constant beratement of her dad in joke after joke. Much of the audience laughs because they feel the same.

I won't pretend to know her family struggles, but the public lynching of present fathers is becoming a strong dark theme.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#739
post #466

Earlier quoted context omitted.

interesting - one way to test the efficacy of something like this might be to compare median outcomes of adopted kids (whose parents went through some parenting education) with that of the non adopted general population (after controlling for other factors). Now which PhD candidate will bite :)

Hard to imagine how to design such study: (close to) 100% of people that adopt kid WANTED to have kid, and planned for them. Some XX% number of people having kid via pregnancy wasn't planning for them, and some even smaller YY% number doesn't want the kid at all. Not to mention that unless the adoption of kids are done blind by parents, there has to be some biases there. As an example out of my ass, kids with behavio…

Obvious way to remove that bias would be to start by recruiting couples who are not parents but want to become parents and then follow them through their lives and their childrens lives. Within that cohort you would have a large number who would conceive naturally, some would go for IVF etc, some would adopt and some would not end up having children.

Re: Ignoring boys' emotional needs fuels public health risks

#740
post #396

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Err… what? So people with abusive or absent dads should just forgive and love them?

Dad murdered mom when I was 15, so I have some experience here. I haven't seen him since I testified against him. But... I don't let that define my life. I miss mom, and I always will, but I made peace with it and have moved on. You can't just spend your life sobbing into a pillow or grinding my teeth in rage, at some point you have to go back to just living again.

Forgiveness is often more about the forgiver than the forgiven.
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