welcome to this initial episode of Raising Men my name is Sean Dawson I'm starting this podcast because well the world my boy will inherit is nothing like the one that I grew up in I'm not an expert with all the answers I'm a dad who's just trying to recognize his humility and ask better questions if you're listening to this maybe you've been asking some of the same ones I'll tell you what keeps me up at night we're raising boys in a culture that's simultaneously telling them
that they're too much they're not enough they're too aggressive and not assertive enough they're too emotional but also too stoic the growing up with unlimited access to everything except clarity about what it actually means to be a good man and while we their parents are debating masculinity in conference rooms and comment sections our sons are learning from YouTube algorithms and social media influencers they're getting their blueprint for manhood from people who've never changed a diaper
or stayed up all night with a sick kid or took him to the hospital frankly they're getting their blueprint from people you'd shield them from if you ran into them on a train let me tell you a story now my wife and I we agonized over the decision about whether or not to have kids so I did what I presume all engineers do I conducted an analysis and a field study of the matter now I at the time I was traveling a lot so I sat next to a lot of strangers on airplanes
and I interviewed just about everybody I knew and everybody I met on those planes about how they felt about their decision whether or not to have kids the main thing that I Learned is that there was no wrong answer pretty much everyone I talked to was pretty happy about whatever decision they made but the thing that I noticed was that the parents were happy in this fundamental almost spiritual way whereas the non parents well they were mostly just bragging about how much money they still had
the best response that I got came from a person I very much admire we were we were sitting on his porch and his gorgeous wife and their three year old son we're playing Frisbee with their border collie in the yard he said you know said I love my wife she's great but that boy that boy is my soulmate man my experience in the early days could not have been more opposite to this one of the suspicions I had in fact is that all of that positivity that I experienced
during my research was just a ruse to make non parents just as miserable as the parents were my wife and my lives were obliterated it was so grueling and awful that my wife and I we were at each other's throats constantly and we had to make an explicit agreement that we wouldn't get divorced before the boy was at least a year old for example uh his stomach was both very elastic but also way smaller than his appetite so he would projectile vomit three or four times his body length
like a bottle of Diet Coke with a Mentos dropped into it between that and the dirty diapers that we left all over the place the dogs were in paradise believe me now the first time I had a twinge of what my friend was talking about with the soulmate thing the boy was about 4 months old and I just finished changing his diaper I held out my index fingers and he reached up and he pulled himself up by it was the very first time that I taught him anything at all
and it clicked for me that my job my role is to foster an environment where he can build the skills that he needs to make his place in the world and for the very first time I felt it I understood a little bit about what my friend meant by soulmate it reminded me of a time years earlier when I was 12 years old I went on a work trip with my dad one summer now this was towards the end of the trip we were in Arlington Texas and I was stuck for two days in a hotel room
literally looking down at the six flags amusement park that was across the highway from our hotel but I was completely I was unable to go it was it was kind of torture frankly but the Texas State Fair was going on and on the very last day of the trip my dad took me to the fair now the centerpiece of the Texas State Fair is this enormous Ferris wheel my dad and I rode it together near the top looking out over the lights of the city my dad puts his arm around me and he says
I think you're gonna be a great man someday and you know I was too wrapped up in my own stuff at the time I'm 12 going on 13 but what I realize now is that this was his way of saying to me however imperfectly son you're my soulmate my wife and I we have some friends who lost their two and a/2 year old boy in this freak accident they were hiking in the woods and a tree just fell down and hit the boy he was gone just like that his dad standing right next to him and I think about that dad every day
that is the manifestation of all of my life's fears and worries all at once I wouldn't know how to live through it and it drove home to me that you can lose them at any time so what do you do well one of the things I did was to take my boy camping I'd mentioned it as a possibility one time and he kind of pestered me about it he asked me about it several times and so I set it up and one of the pleasures that I find about being a parent it's it's like when you meet a friend
who's never seen a movie that you particularly like like oh my gosh you've never seen The Usual Suspects we have to go see it right now and then you get to experience it anew through their eyes that's well that's the way your kid is about everything and camping was definitely like that this is my first time in a sleeping bag and this is my first time being inside of a tent we built a fire we made hot dogs s'mores about 1:30 in the morning we were sleeping in the tent it was very cold very dark
and we could we could hear the coyotes roaming around and howling and he stirred he said dad can you keep me warm I unzipped my sleeping bag a little bit I pulled him close I said of course buddy I'll always keep you warm but what I was really trying to say was son you're my soulmate he doesn't understand that any more than I did on the Ferris wheel back then and hopefully I'll get better over time and decades from now he'll be able to say it to his son a little bit better than I said it to him
now this isn't a podcast about returning to some mythical good old days this frankly those days weren't that good for a lot of people this this is about moving forward with intention because here's what I've Learned our sons they don't need us to be perfect they need us to be present they don't need us to have all the answers they need us to be willing to wrestle with difficult questions questions like how do we teach them to be strong without being brittle
how do we navigate a culture that either works the worst parts of masculinity or tries to vilify it out of existence entirely how do we show them that real strength stems from recognizing and admitting when you're wrong how do we prepare them for a world where emotional intelligence is mandatory how do we raise men who can lead with both conviction and compassion maybe the hardest question of all is what kind of man should I model for my son now look I don't want to be dramatic
but the statistics about this stuff are really sobering young men they're struggling with purpose with connection and mental health at unprecedented rates they're more isolated they're more likely I'm sorry they're less likely to have close friendships and they're increasingly disconnected from the kind of mentorship that used to happen naturally but here's what gives me hope intentional parents parents who are willing to do the work not just on their sons but on themselves too because our boys
they're not really even just listening to what we say they're watching what we do and they're becoming who we are raising men will be honest conversations about raising sons with purpose some episodes might just be me wrestling with questions that keep me up at night others will be conversations with parents experts and folks who've walked this road before us who've succeeded and failed we'll talk about discipline that builds character not compliance about teaching boys to navigate emotions
without drowning in them about raising men who can disagree without demonizing who can be confident without being arrogant who can be tender without being weak now it's not always gonna be comfortable but it will always be authentic and it will always be real so if you're still listening I want to invite you to something bigger than a podcast I want you to invite you into this notion of intentional parenthood because frankly the world needs more men of character
and character does not happen by accident it's forged in the daily decisions of parents who refuse to let their sons be raised by default by a potentially toxic culture so here's what happens next subscribe to the show and really importantly if you can share it with another dad who might be asking the same questions and connect with me on social at Raising Men Podcast because this conversation doesn't end when the episode does most importantly take a look at your son today really look at him
ask yourself what kind of man is he gonna become because of who I choose to be so it starts thanks so much for being here so let's go raise some men together