¶ Intro / Opening
Hi, welcome to the family teams podcast. Our goal here is to help your family become a multi generational team on mission by providing you with biblically rooted concepts, tools, and rhythms. Your hosts are Jeremy Pryor and Jefferson Bethke, and we can't wait to chat about all things family. Hey everybody.
So Rob is a kind of a, he's got a fascinating story. He's, he grew up kind of as a foster kid. Uh, and he, he, um, is just a brilliant, has a brilliant mind and has been writing, uh, uh, really from the perspective of the working class about a lot of issues and probably his claim to fame, uh, more than anything else is really coining and describing the impact of what he calls a luxury beliefs.
You know, Hey, we're going to, uh, we should all pay more for energy. That's great. If you're not in a, you know, impoverished country, you know? Um, so this has not been called out properly that there are beliefs that give you a lot of status, but they also, you're not incurring the cost. You're actually exporting the cost on vulnerable people.
You have all, you use all this money and all this privilege and you're in your huge network to be able to defend your, you know, your, uh, alternative lifestyle, but for somebody who's barely surviving, um, to say being a single parent is just as good as being in a two parent home. That is a terrible idea for 90 percent of the world.
And so he doesn't let them play. But I cited this, uh, this study, uh, recently. Indicating that, um, children raised in families that earn 35, 000 or less per year spend two hours more per day on screens than children raised in families that earn 100, 000 or more per year. So essentially, kids in poor families spend two hours more per day in front of a screen than kids from rich families.
All right, so that's his position. And I wanted to maybe get your guys feedback on this. So I think, I think one of the problems that I'm really wrestling with here, Is that when we talk to family teams, we're often talking to, you know, intact families, and we're trying to help level up families that where there's a mom and a dad, but what's, you know, the vast majority of people are living in a world with broken families.
I mean, I have contracts with my kids and, you know, I monitor the devices and I I'm locking them down. And, and so we're in a position of just radical privilege, so to speak, from a, just, um, a bandwidth perspective. We, we care a lot about this issue. We've thought a lot about it. We've read the books. We've, you know, read the articles and we're intentional about how to limit our children's, um, the impact that social media is having my daughters, for example, or that the, and I would say that even in that context, there's a lot of times in which we've really failed our kids.
Okay. But that's, that's one frame. There's another frame that Rob Henderson is bringing up that I don't think about nearly enough. And this is the one I wanted to ask you guys about. What about, what about everyone else? I mean, you've got companies that are spending billions of dollars to get children addicted to, to things that are going to grab their attention and make these different platforms a huge amount of money and how that is not a, that's not a fair fight.
And, and so these kids are getting addicted in ways that are destroying all of us, right. And destroying another generation of children. Yeah. What, what do you, what does that start for you guys? I'll start with you, Cameron, and then what do you, Curt? Yeah. As I'm hearing that I'm imagining people that I know people who even do have the bandwidth and yet are just kind of tossing, tossing screens in front of their kids.
And I guess what I'm just kind of wrestling with, as I hear this is the idea that there's kind of a story that is being believed and lived, um, where You don't, you don't almost have a compelling enough vision outside of that. And so what we see at the end of some, like a live story are families with means and families without means.
A little bit is wondering, are we looking at 1? Is it are we kind of a little too narrow and looking at just the screens or is this kind of a whole bag of decision making and beliefs that lead somebody to a position where. They find themselves with that relying on that. Excellent point. Basically, um, one of the principles that I, the way I would kind of describe what you're describing Cameron is look, children were meant to be raised in very strong families with, with two parents and any band aids you put or anything society does to try to mitigate the damage created by not deciding to follow the kinds of beliefs and the kinds of practices that lead to that.
The book Family Revision by Jeremy Pryor is the book that summarizes all the big picture ideas you hear on this podcast. Available on Amazon or FamilyTeams. com.
To take attention away. And I think there's an epidemic of distraction lately, um, or perhaps over the last number of decades, um, that I think stops people from thinking deeper about the purpose of life, uh, the things that matter. And so I think there's a huge, like, existential component to this that if we just try to regulate this from, like, let's say, a federal level or something like that.
And, you know, they were lamenting, um, we had a tour guide who was discreet, you know, and every single one of our tour guys were divorced and single parents. It was, that was, I don't know why that, that, that was the case, but that, that was the case. That was, um, you know, a very small sample size, but they, but because of this, we were, and we were there part of the reason why I like, we like to travel to new country and ask a million questions about family.
I mean, who knows what will happen if, if, if you, if the government can't protect children from their parents. And we all know there's horror stories, right? Of, of, you know, this is kind of Rob Henderson's whole story, which is why I find his opinion so fascinating because he's constantly dealing with this tension.
And every society is attempting to deal with this in different ways. And, and this is, but I think that what, I think that the problem that I think I want to like sort of signal is that the diseases are getting worse. And I think that what's going to, I think that people are going to begin to demand the, as the diseases get worse, it's going to be increasingly attractive for people to call for the government to step in between parents and children and say, we have to regulate all of this and be like China, which literally regulates how much time your kids can spend on a computer because we're going to get overrun by the countries who do have universal control.
And instead they're just shoring up the walls to try to keep the walls collapsing. But that's a true. Crummy solution. And I think that, I think that one issue is that like there, it has to do with the, how loud some of these voices are. There are very loud voices in marketing that are screaming all day long that you need to sign up for this.
Yeah, this is the reason why you guys, I'm such a, I'm such a hawk watching the way the culture describes something like fatherhood. So, you know, so many people that I know have been sort of obsessed with Bluey, you know, as a TV show that kind of describes a certain version of fatherhood, the playful father.
And so part of the reason why we're saying no to things is because there's a giant yes that we're leading our family towards that requires a lot of leadership that requires a certain kind of philosophy of family that the family is like a team. And so when you start to have those beliefs, you start to.
One of those rules is that he wants parents to, um, decide voluntarily to not allow children to have social media until they're 16 years old. And he's called it a collective, collective action problem, which is to say that he wants parents to go to other parents and try to, um, Get them to also, uh, not allow this for their children.
You know, that's, that's not where most families are at. And so the collective action problem is not going to work because there's not enough intact families to have a collective action at all. You really have to say, you know, That you really have to put steel in the spine of moms and dads to say it's your responsibility, regardless of what anyone else does, regardless of what other families do, you have to make these decisions and set these policies as a, as a household.
Yeah, and I think that this is so big that I personally, I need to break it up. Like, you've got the very specific problem of fathers leading families. And even in that, in Our circle, so to speak, guys who should get it. I'm still surprised that it's not a hundred percent like, Oh yeah, we don't have screens at all.
Because like I didn't even know that and so i'm seeing this and we almost have to Get more of that more real life Examples of why and how fatherhood can be amazing If you put in the hard work of creating boundaries, and if you actually go through the actual steps of leading your family like you would lead your business, for example, but on the other side of that, is this societal issue where all of these kids are being missed because they have the single family households because their parents miss them.
Like you have to play offense and defense. You have to deal with the problems that, that, that have created. And if you just, just have a hospital, um, imagine, you know, you have a invading force. And you're like, well, we're really good. Like we're all doing hospitals. And so as people are getting blown up left and right, we're so good at healing them.
One, I'm the same guy. My circumstances haven't changed much. They hadn't anyway, except for I adopted a new story and a new vision and everything changed. In other words, I'm the same person. And yet. Everything about my family, everything about the things that I devote my time and energy to any, all of that stuff.
All of these things that are, that are even causing the, this discussion with the, uh, the clip that you played are because of just wreckage and broken things. And so if we're not willing to call those things and the things that lead to that kind of wreckage out for what it is, then I think we just perpetuate the same kind of problems.
And for them to get excited about that, and then to begin to move their family properly, that creates enormous, like, I love how you put a camera in that. Once your mindset shifts. It changes everything. And that's what I've discovered increasingly is that that is the root of the problem. And so it's not, it's not an awareness problem, first and foremost.
And, uh, and they start believing their family in a better direction. Awesome. Well, thank you guys so much for doing this with me today. This has been a awesome kind of quick break from the day and like dive into a super deep topic. Yeah. Thanks, Jeremy. Perfect. Thanks, Jeremy. podcast. If you're enjoying this content or have learned something new, Please make sure to leave a rating and review and share with a friend.