Morning Wire - Mass Shootings & Missing Fathers | 7.17.22

Episode Date: July 17, 2022

After each mass shooting in America, politicians and pundits sound the alarm about a variety of contributing causes, ranging from violent video games, to skyrocketing rates of depression, and of course, access to guns. We speak to an expert who says the problem starts closer to home. Get the facts first on Morning Wire. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

The mass shooting in Illinois, indications are that was a regular pot user. What can regular pot use trigger in young men in particular? Psychosis and other violent personality changes. Until Americans decide that they want to give up the guns and give up the opportunity to get guns, we're going to have this problem. Guns are the number one killer of children in the United States of America.

The problem is mental health. A shockingly large number of them have been prescribed psychotropic drugs by their doctors, SSRIs or antidepressants. These drugs are meant to prevent crazy behavior, and yet there seems to be a connection. With each new mass shooting in America, politicians and media pundits sound the alarm about a variety of possible contributing causes, ranging from violent video games to skyrocketing rates of depression to, of course, widespread access to guns. In this episode, Morning Wire producer and contributor Colton Haas spoke to one expert who

says the problem starts closer to home. I'm John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday July 17th, and this is Morning Wire. Hey, everyone. Producer Colton here. The American tradition of gathering around the dinner table holds an immense amount of power. President Ronald Reagan believed that all great change in America begins around the dinner table.

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free shipping. That's goodranchers.com slash wire. Hey, Colton. So first, thanks for doing this research and conducting this interview. Tell us about who you talk to. Yeah, so I spoke to Dr. Warren Farrell. He's the author of a book called The Boy Crisis, why our boys are struggling and what we can do about it.

I started off by asking him if he had a theory for why these mass shootings keep on happening. Here's what he had to say. First off, we blame mass shootings on the replacement theory-style hatred as we did in Buffalo, on access to guns, on poor family values, on violence in the media, violence and video games, and mental illness. But when we look at all those things, our daughters live in the same families with the same family values, have the same access to the same guns, are bright enough to be able to access those guns in the same way. They have access to the same video games and violence in the video games and violence in the media. and they suffer similar mental illnesses.

But our daughters are not doing the killing, our sons are. And so that really boils it down to males. But it wasn't all boys that are obviously that are having these propensities. It was mostly boys who were dad deprived. Okay, so Dr. Farrell here is arguing that first, look, it's all males. This is something that's no secret. We need to focus in on that. What's the difference between females and males in the situation?

and then specifically that they do not have fathers in the household, or maybe a father's presence. That's exactly what he's talking about, yeah. And he actually goes on to elaborate further. Now, once these boys are dad deprived, they feel the pain of that deprivation, mostly the pain of no structure, no male constructive male role model, and no sort of sense of purpose. They feel oftentimes that they're abandoned or that they weren't worthy of their father. lots of reasons that accumulate into an enormous amount of pain and anger. And pain and anger are often very confused. In the United States especially, we respond to anger with anger,

but we don't recognize that anger is almost always a vulnerability's mask. And when these boys don't feel anyone's paying attention to their pain, they want to communicate their pain and be paid attention to as loudly and as powerfully as they can. so they go for guns as powerful as they can get. Because basically, boys who hurt us are boys who hurt. All right, so Dr. Farrell here is highlighting that it's not only that they suffer the pain, is that they feel like the pain is not recognized by anyone. There's no healthy attention to that pain specifically from the father.

Yeah, he argues that that desire for attention is so powerful that it is leading some boys to commit these heinous acts of violence. And then asked him why he thought to call it a, crisis? First of all, I'm very cautious about using words like crisis. So the bar is very high for me. But here's some examples of the boy crisis. First of all, it manifests in the area of physical health, mental health, education achievement, and many, many other areas. So boys, particularly boys, who do not have their dads, that's the single highest predictor of suicide. So there are more than 70 other areas that we all would care about from academic success to other forms of mental health

that boys are falling way behind girls on and way behind where they used to be. So, for example, on the suicide issue, boys and girls, when they're nine, commit suicide equally and very rarely. Between the ages of 10 and 14, boys commit suicide twice as often as girls. Between the ages of 15 and 19, four times as often as girls, and between the ages of 20 and 25, five times as often as girls. And we're not even asking questions about why that's so, but the single biggest predictor of suicide is among boys who are what I call dad deprived. And Dr. Farrell stresses that dad deprived isn't just the lack of a present father, but really any male role model for a boy to look up to. Dr. Farrell then discusses the impact of the view of one.

father, even in death. When a father dies in war, oftentimes his picture goes on the mantle and we say, you know, dad died in the Marines or he died, you know, serving his country. And he becomes a hero. And so while it's really sad for the boy, the boy has a very strong father's figure, at least in an image of himself. He imagines himself being like his dad. And mom is always able to be. to appeal to, dad would want you to do this. Dad would, you know, dad would be proud of you if you did this. You're the man of the family now. You need to take responsibilities like this. And so this boy has this inspiration to live with. When a boy is in a divorce situation, particularly, and he hears his mom often saying, you know, your dad and I divorce, we're very sorry about that, but he was irresponsible.

He was a narcissist. He was, he was not really a good man. And you'll be back. off without him. Well, that boy looks in the mirror and he sees the body language and the hair of his dad, et cetera. And what's being criticized there from his perspective is the half of him that is his dad. And so he begins to fear that maybe he's a narcissist. He's a liar. He's irresponsible like his dad was, but he doesn't see enough of his dad to be able to check that out against reality. And so he feels both abandoned and fearful that he is going to be a loser, quote-unquote, like his dad is, according to his mom. And so, you know, that bad-mouthing of the other parent, and this is true if it's reverse, if the dad is bad-mouthing the mom, particularly after divorce and particularly

if that child doesn't see much of the other parent, you're doing one of the worst forms of child abuse. I then asked him how he thinks we can solve this problem. The most important, single thing to solving it is paying attention to it and recognizing just doing exactly what you're doing now, getting the message out there that dads are so important. The crux of this argument is that societally, in our families, in our personal interactions, we have to recognize the necessity of a father figure in a boy's life. Well, as you mentioned, I don't think it's hyperbole to say that this is indeed a crisis. We've got to figure out what the source is and address it more directly because what we're doing right now is not working. Indeed. Thanks so much for coming on.

on, Colton. Thanks for having me. That was Morning Wire producer and contributor, Colton Haas, and this has been a Sunday edition of Morning Wire.