Because I Said So!

Are Women to Blame?

• John Rosemond • Season 1 • Episode 42

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Are women - mothers, that is - primarily responsible for America’s child-rearing problems? Well, um, uh, in a sense, yes. Mind you, America’s child-rearing problems are primarily the fault of America’s mental health industry, which is nothing but junk science, but if the problems caused by America’s mental health industry are going to be solved, women - mothers, that is - are going to have to take the lead.

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Speaker 1:

You better turn on your radio, dial up to John Rollins' show, because I said so. Well, hello and welcome. Or welcome back, as the case may be too, because I said so. I'm your host, john Rosemont. You can find out more about me and my mission slash ministry by going to parentagurucom or simply johnrosemontcom.

Speaker 1:

This is the only podcast on the entire Universe-wide Web where you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about America's mental health professions. And to let me remind or inform that I, yours truly, am a psychologist, licensed as such by the North Carolina Psychology Board, which regrets the day they ever gave me a license in 1979. Yes, they do, and they have tried unsuccessfully. Ta-da, to take it away from me three times cost me a lot of money, lawyer-type money, but it has been worth it. So I'm going to talk today about women, a volatile subject for a man to tackle. And yes, I am a man. My pronouns, not preferred pronouns, my pronouns. My pronouns are he, his, him.

Speaker 1:

Yes, I am a man, I am a husband to Willie of fifty-five wonderful years. Fifty-five. We were married when I was twenty and she was nineteen. She had just turned nineteen, by the way, and became pregnant immediately, and our first child was born before she turned twenty. She was, in other words, a teenage mother, fifty-five years, and we are the parents of two children, willie and I. Eric is fifty-five I believe I lose track of these of the older they get, the more likely it is I get their birthdays wrong. But anyway, he's, I'm pretty sure he's fifty-five, maybe fifty-four, maybe not yet fifty-five, and Amy is fifty-two, if I'm doing the math correctly. But anyway, I'm going to talk today yeah, I'm going to talk today about women. I'm going to talk today about mothers and I'm going to talk very frankly, I'm going to talk very straightforwardly and I'm going to talk in a way that some people are going to find very controversial. And if that's the case, well, that's the case. So I'm going to start with a question that I received a couple of weeks ago from a regular listener who asks why, john, why do you seem to blame women For all the problems we're having with what you call the simple, straightforward process of raising a child In the first place?

Speaker 1:

It's not simple and straightforward, it's very challenging. Secondly, america's parenting problems are as much the fault of men as women. Eh well, that's a very interesting question, pertinent indeed. It's actually three questions in one. The first question is child-rearing a fundamentally simple, straightforward process or is it especially challenging? Is an important question, because if it is especially challenging, then problems, even huge problems, are to be expected. So let's just talk about that for a second. Is child-rearing a fundamentally simple, straightforward process, or is it especially challenging? That's a fundamentally simple, straightforward process If you keep things in their proper places and you keep things in a proper perspective and folks that is a description of why we're having so many problems today raising children that people in my mother's generation and generations of parents prior to my mother was a single parent for most of the first seven years of my life.

Speaker 1:

That's why I did not refer to my parents. My mother was a single parent for most of the first seven years of my life. She didn't have very many problems with me at all. She never yelled, she never spanked. I don't remember her ever really raising her voice. I assume that there were times when she did, but I don't really remember that it wasn't something that occurred frequently enough, often enough for me to remember it. And yet I was afraid of my mother. I wasn't afraid in the sense of I was terrified of her. I was very secure in her love for me. She was a wonderfully funny person. I thought she had just tremendous talents although that wasn't the word I would have used at that age. But I looked up to her, I respected her, I obeyed her. I obeyed her simply because she occupied her authority properly. So I talked a minute or so ago about people keeping things in their proper place and keeping things in a proper perspective. What I just said about my mother explains the difference between then and now, then being a time in American history, not that long ago, when parents really didn't have major problems with children. I mean, there's exceptions to everything I say. I have to speak in general terms, but I never. I was talking to some friends of mine the other day about this.

Speaker 1:

I never in my entire childhood I never witnessed another child throw a tantrum. I never witnessed another child express anger toward his or her parents, much less have a complete emotional meltdown in front of them because they had denied him something he wanted. I never witnessed a tantrum on the part of another child. I never threw a tantrum. I went to my mother. I asked her for something. She said no. I shrugged my shoulders and went on with my life. I never saw another child openly and bulligerently defy parental authority. I expand that to adult authority because I never saw another child openly and bulligerently defy the authority of a teacher in one of the schools I attended. I never saw another child openly and bulligerently defy parental authority. And when I talk about my experience as a child with other people my age, they affirm that their experience, generally speaking, was pretty much the same as mine. Children weren't back in the late 40s and early 50s. Up through the early 60s, they were not doing what today's children are doing. Today's children are telling their parents I'm not going to do what you've just told me to do Openly, belligerently, defying a parental instruction.

Speaker 1:

From the point of view of a person my age I'm 76, born in 1947. From the point of view of a person my age the behavior that we are sometimes seeing on the part of children in this country quite often the behavior of children whose parents are relatives of ours, close friends of ours, associates of ours, in some way, shape or form. We go to church with these people. Maybe it's outrageous, it's unbelievable. How has this happened? How has it happened that 8, 9, 10-year-old children are throwing tantrums in public places. Well, folks, if you've tuned into this podcast for the first time, that is basically a description of my purpose here. My purpose here is to explain how this has happened, and I am bold enough to say I absolutely know how this has come about.

Speaker 1:

I know the answer to the question how is it, john, how is it that in the 1950s, when you were growing up, children didn't throw tantrums in public places and calmly obeyed what they were told to do and not do by adults, and how is it that that is no longer the case today? Is it because times have changed? That's a good question too, folks, this thing about. Well, john, times have changed. I mean folks. Times have always changed, always since the dawn of human history. Times have always changed, especially in Western civilization. From one generation to the next, people have brought innovation of all sorts into culture. It's called progress, and progress has been the hallmark of Western civilization since the dawn of human history. But the one thing that never changed was people's general attitude toward children and people's approach to the raising of children. That didn't change.

Speaker 1:

If you go back and you read things that were written about children and there's very, really there's in the history of the human race species. There's not a whole lot until you get to the late 19th century written about children and how to raise them properly, and then there's a little bit of stuff, a little sprinkling of stuff, between the late 19th century and the mid-20th century, and then suddenly, in the late 1960s, the parenting genre in American literature just explodes. It explodes, but for the hundreds of thousands of years before that explosion which took place here in America, which I refer to as the postmodern psychological parenting revolution, what you read about children is what people understood to be true of children and true concerning how to raise children properly, for thousands of years. That's why there was no literature about it, because everybody understood, well, this is the nature of children and because this is the nature of children and because these are the needs of culture, these are what you need to know about how to raise children. These are the facts. So during those thousands of years, we listened to our elders when it came to the raising of kids. And then suddenly, in the late 1960s and early 1970s, we stopped listening to our elders and we began to be persuaded that, in order to know what you were talking about concerning children and how to properly approach them, raise them, discipline them. You needed to have capital letters after your name and you needed to have a fancy title like psychologist. So I went to psychology graduate school in the late 60s and early 70s and I was inundated with postmodern psychological parenting propaganda concerning children and families.

Speaker 1:

And I came out of graduate school in 1972 and at that point in time I had one child age three and another on the way, and our house, our little home that we lived in in McComb and then Carthage, illinois, was in a constant state of uproar. Our first child, eric. He ran our home. He was in total control of the emotional climate of our home. My wife and I were experiencing with Eric problems that we had never given to our parents, and we just didn't understand what was going on. We just didn't understand. What we didn't understand was our parents, when they raised us, were carrying on a tradition, and then, when it came time for us, willie and myself, to begin raising our children, we rejected that tradition, which was thousands of years old, and we began walking down. In Robert Frost's terms, the road never traveled. When it came to children, we began taking our marching orders from my profession. So my profession was saying this about children. And so this is what we did. And it created problem after problem after problem and I finally woke up to this in 1980 when my wife and I were informed that our son Eric was quote.

Speaker 1:

And the teacher was no hysteric she was a wonderful teacher, an excellent teacher, she was an excellent classroom manager, she had 20 years of experience behind her and she told Willie and myself in January of 1979 that Eric was quote, the worst behaved child I have seen in 20 years of teaching. The worst behaved child I've seen in 20 years of teaching. I mean, my wife and I were floored Mrs Stewart, that was her name. She also told us that there was no way that Eric was going to the fourth grade. She was not sending a child to the fourth grade who would not pay attention, who was a constant classroom disruptor. Eric was going to remain with her in the third grade for another year because she said I am the only teacher in the school who can handle him the worst behaved child she had seen in 20 years of teaching.

Speaker 1:

Three months later we went back in for a follow up conference with her. We were talking about April of 1979 and she looked at us and she said I don't know what you're doing, but keep on doing it. Mrs and Mrs Rosemond, I've never seen such a dramatic turnaround in a child in a three month period of time in my entire career. When this turnaround began happening, I did not believe that it could sustain itself or that Eric could sustain it, and that's why I didn't say anything to you until today. But it is time for me to tell you that if Eric stays on this track, he will go to the fourth grade. She told us she felt like she had seen a miracle occur during the past three months. And believe you me, folks, in January of 1979, eric qualified for four diagnoses Attention deficit, hyperactivity disorder scale of 1 to 10, 10. Humanal defiant disorder scale of 1 to 10, 10. Bipolar disorder of childhood scale of 1 to 10, 10. And a learning disability scale of 1 to 10, 7 and rising. And in April, three months later, he qualified for no diagnoses whatsoever.

Speaker 1:

What did you do, john? Nothing. We did absolutely nothing. We went home from that January meeting with Mrs Stewart and we sat down and it was Willie who said finally, you know, when Eric was born, we made a conscious decision not to raise him the way we ourselves had been raised and we never witnessed behavior of the sort that we are dealing with on a daily basis from Eric. When we were kids we never witnessed behavior like this. Don't you think, willie said Rhetorically, don't you think that if we had continued to do with our children the way, the things that our parents had continued to do with us, that we would not be having these problems today? And folks, I heard this from my wife and it was like, as we say in the South, being kicked upside the head by a mule. It just woke me up and I began to realize what a toxic effect my profession had had on parenting culture in America. What did we do during those three months? We did nothing.

Speaker 1:

The evening of the day in which Willie said and it was probably three days after that initial meeting with Mrs Stewart that evening we sat down with Eric and we said Eric, mrs Stewart says you're not going to the fourth grade. And I'll never forget his reaction. His face popped wide open. He said I'm not going to the fourth grade. I said I did not say that. I said Mrs Stewart says you're not going to the fourth grade. What's the difference? I said the difference is that you have four months February, march, april and May to convince Mrs Stewart that you are capable of being a responsible fourth grade student, and in order to do that, you need to know exactly what the problem is.

Speaker 1:

So here is the problem, and I just laid it out for him. I just told him everything, pretty much word for word, that Mrs Stewart had told us and I said you've got four months to correct this and here's how mom and I are going to help you. We're not what do you mean? We're not going to help you. We're not going to help you get to the fourth grade. We're never again going to ask you if you have homework, for example. We're never again going to tell you that we want to see your homework, we want to check your homework.

Speaker 1:

If you come to us and you ask us for help with your homework, any sort of help, any sort of help we're not giving it to you. We're not going to help you better understand directions. We're not going to pronounce a word for you. We're not going to show you how to do a math problem. We're not going to continue doing any of the stuff we've been doing up until now. It obviously hasn't worked until now. There's no reason to believe it's going to work after now. So we're not doing it anymore. We're not helping you with your homework. We're not even asking you if you have any. We're not asking you have you finished it? And he looked at me and he said Dad, how am I going to get to the fourth grade if you don't help me? And I said that's a good question. And here's the answer. You won't understand it until you're older, but here it is. If Mom and I have to help you get to the fourth grade, then you shouldn't be there. And three months later he was on his way to the fourth grade. And I realized from this experience with Eric this three-month experience where a kid who in January qualified for four diagnoses and in April qualified for none I realized everything my profession was telling parents about children and how to raise them properly was wrong. And, folks, that has led to this podcast today.

Speaker 1:

Is child-rearing a fundamentally simple, straightforward process? Yes, it is, but you have to keep things in their proper places, you have to keep your priorities straight and you have to approach children from a proper point of view. And none of that is happening in America. I mean, it's happening here and there. There are people who, in the raising of children in the year 2024, are pretty much doing what my parents, my mother did and later my mother and stepfather in the 1950s. But those people and they know this about themselves they are few and they are far between. Yeah, child-rearing is a fundamentally simple, straightforward process.

Speaker 1:

People come up to me and they go John, my child won't do what I tell him to do. It's just an example of what I'm talking about here and I say, yes, he will. I give these Zen answers sometimes, by the way yes, he will. And the person will look at me almost confused and they'll go. He will what I go. You told me your son won't do what you tell him to do and I said, yes, he will. No, john, he doesn't. Well, he doesn't. But the way you put it was he doesn't do what you tell him to do. Well, that's right. He doesn't do what I tell him to do. At which point I say, well, I know what the problem is. It's the same problem every time parents tell me that Okay, what's the problem? The problem is you're not telling Children do what they are told. Children respond properly to the proper presentation of authority. Children do what they are told. If your son will not do what you tell him to do, then you are not telling. You are doing what 99.9% of parents are doing in America and that may be a conservative estimate you are pleading, bargaining, bribing, cajoling, reasoning, explaining, and when none of that works, then you begin threatening and screaming, none of which is telling. When you learn how to tell, simply tell your son what to do your son will begin doing what you tell him to do.

Speaker 1:

Yeah, I mean, you know, I didn't learn this stuff in graduate school folks. I learned it in the real world. I learned it courtesy of my son and my daughter to lesser degree. But I learned it primarily courtesy of my son who was the worst-behaved child. His third-grade teacher, mrs Stewart, had seen in 1979, in her entire 20 years of teaching 20 years of teaching she had never seen a child Save as badly as Eric Rosemond. And three months later, if you'd walked into his classroom and Mrs Stewart had said, can you pick out from me the child who three months ago was the worst-behaved child I'd seen in 20 years, you would not have been able to pick him out. No way. And again I just realized oh, everything, my profession is telling the American parent is wrong Everything. Therefore they are the problem.

Speaker 1:

So the second question becomes do I blame women predominantly or exclusively for today's child-rearing problems, which for the most part are problems that were rare when I was a child? Let's see the answer to that question. Do I blame women predominantly or exclusively for today's child-rearing problems, which for the most part are problems that were rare when I was a kid, sort of? I'm not really equivocating here, folks, it's a very difficult question to answer. I just told you my profession and the advice that has come from my profession concerning children and child-rearing over the last 50 years call it 54 years. 1970 is when it began never take a year and a half or so. My profession is the problem, but the further problem is that the primary consumer of the advice the toxic, terrible, awful advice that's been coming out of my profession for the last 50 years, the primary consumer is a female.

Speaker 1:

Women are reading this junk. They're reading it in Parenting Magazine, they're reading it in Child Magazine, they're reading it in Books, they're reading it on the Internet. They're going to gentle parenting webinars on the Internet and they're just absorbing the same junk about as polite as I can put it that my wife and I began absorbing when Eric was born in 1969. So do I blame women? Sort of kinda. I mean, who was to blame for Eric's behavior? My wife and myself? Yeah, we were following the marching orders being given to us by people in my profession, but when it all boiled down, my wife and I had created the problem and we had to solve it. We couldn't push it off on anybody else, and so it's the same process. The same thing is going on today. Women are absorbing junk advice when it comes to the raising of children, and it may not be their fault, the problems that they're having with their kids, but they are going to have to begin doing very, very different things. So are their husbands.

Speaker 1:

But let's face it, folks, in the last 50 years or so, the American family has are you ready? Grab the arms of the chairs you're sitting in, folks? The American family has become a matriarchy when the raising of children is concerned. In 99 per up 0.9% of American households and again, that may be a conservative estimate the female parent is the parenting decider. She is the parenting CEO. Her husband is a mere parenting aide. He is there to assist. His role in the home is analogous to that of a teacher's aide in the classroom. The teacher's aide really doesn't understand the curriculum, she doesn't direct the delivery of the curriculum, she's there to help. And that, unfortunately, is the role that many a male in America has accepted in his own home that he is there to follow instruction like a teacher's aide. I'm telling you, folks, this thing that we're calling parenting, it is a very, very, very easy, screwed up mess. It is a mess.

Speaker 1:

So the third question, or America's child-rearing problems as much the fault of men as women, yeah, yeah, but in order for these problems to be solved, women are going to have to accept that they can no longer be the parenting CEOs. I understand, I understand how women listening to this podcast might conclude that I hold biological females who identify as female, also known as mothers, primarily responsible for America's child-rearing ills, of which there are legion. Like I said, in a sense I do, and then again, in another sense, I do not. The indisputable fact the audience for parenting advice, in the form of books, videos, magazines, articles, social media chatter, is overwhelmingly female. Furthermore, when women with children congregate, the default topic is their children, the amazing things their children are doing and the amazing things they are doing for their kids.

Speaker 1:

Listening to one of these conversations, which I have done, in which mothers are attempting and not very subtly really to one up one another, is extremely annoying. Men talk about sports incessantly, which I find equally annoying. But then, as my friends will attest, I am an anomaly in many ways. Only few men in America who cares nothing about the outcome of a game. I just don't care. I stopped screaming at television sets many years ago, folks. Anyway, I'm an anomaly in many ways. For anomaly one can substitute outlier, contrarian, psychological, heretic, rebel, nonconformist. In short, I march, as I always have, to the beat of a different drummer, alright. So I've said many times, and will continue to say, 99.9% of the parenting advice out there is toxic.

Speaker 1:

It's toxic because it adheres to a point of view that is informed predominantly by psychological theory, and all I mean all psychological theories concerning human nature are bogus. Psychologists do not properly understand human beings. You're hearing that from a psychologist. I'll say it again psychologists do not properly understand human beings, doesn't that blow your mind? Therefore, psychologists do not understand children properly. Therefore, the advice concerning children given by mental health professionals is bad advice. Quite often, the advice concerning children given by mental health professionals, creates problems where there were none and makes existing problems even worse.

Speaker 1:

Who is consuming this toxic advice? Female parents, that's, who Go to Barnes Noble sometimes you're brick and mortar Barnes Noble. Folks Walk into the child care section, or whatever they call it these days. They keep changing the name of it. But walk into the child care section. Do you see men standing in the aisles of the child care section, roaming through the books on the shelves? No, you see women. Female parents are the primary consumers of the generally stupid and toxic parenting advice that's out there Floating around in the parenting marketplace. And the more mothers read, the more anxious mothers become, and the more anxious mothers become the more they read, and so on, and so on, and so on. And the more anxious they become, the less well they project authority, which leads almost invariably to behavior problems.

Speaker 1:

Some children qualify for a diagnosis of ADD. So do almost all parents today, male and female. But their ADD is authority deficiency disorder, one symptom of which is giving instructions as if one is asking for favors, as in Billy. Do you think you can stop playing with your Legos and help mommy pick up these clothes? Do you think you can help mommy carry these things into the house. You know where did OK come from? That's absurd Asking your child if it's OK, if you give him an instruction. Another symptom of authority deficiency disorder is explaining yourself. Another is yelling, another is threatening, another is negotiating. Are you getting this? Good people? I'm talking about many of you.

Speaker 1:

The more female parents read, the more they think. And the more they think, the more they question themselves. And the more they question themselves, the more they equivocate. The more they equivocate, the more behavior problems their children produce. You know, children are like wild animals. They sense weakness Intuitively and when they sense it weakness that is in an adult they immediately exploit it. Let's face it, folks authority is the state of motherhood.

Speaker 1:

In America, women know that. Women are anxious because they believe that they are solely responsible for the outcomes of the child-rearing projects they are overseeing. In their minds, their children will turn out OK because of their dedication, their devotion and their doing. Like I said, the male parent in America, he is the parenting aide. He is not the parenting CEO. He works in the mailroom. Anxiety. Anxiety produces micromanagement, and so it is that female parents are micromanaging both their children and their husbands, trying to solve every problem that comes along in their children's lives and turning around and telling their husbands how to be fathers, the end result of the latter being that the American male parent is working in the mailroom.

Speaker 1:

He must obtain his wife's approval to acting in prior to acting in some fatherly capacity. But ah, she is not obligated to even inform him what she has done, is doing and or plans on doing with, for or concerning the kitties. He must inform her. He must ask her hey, babes, is this okay? She is under no obligation to inform him. And so, since 1970, a man's home has become his wife's castle. She is the queen, but, paradoxically, the queen of the home in this case is subject to her subjects. Her husband has the status of a vessel subject to her constant scrutiny and correction lest he make a potentially apocalyptic mistake. No, honey, that's not the way you're supposed to do it. So, yes, in a sense, I do hold women primarily responsible for the ongoing train wreck that is parenting in America in the year 2024.

Speaker 1:

Mothers, mothers. What do mothers need to do? What do we need to do, john, to set things straight, you need to recover your once scary authority. Scary Mothers used to be able to be scary without raising their voices. It was called giving a child the look. The look, folks, that's a wrap. Glad you joined me. I hope you've enjoyed it and if you didn't enjoy it, I hope you take something valuable away from it. Anyway, this has been your host, john Roseman, and this has been the podcast, because I said so weekly on every podcast platform in the entire universe wide web. Again, I hope you enjoyed it. I hope you join us again. In the meantime, keep on rocking in the free world, folks, because if we don't keep rocking it, we're going to lose it.

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