This is the FCB Podcast Network. A brand soda day that we won't saying and we won't say all we got it? Does no one get Tattowa is gonna be okay day that we won't saying and we won't saying all we got it? Does no one get takedatto? Don't say it is don't be okay? Well, Hello everybody, welcome back to another episode of Just Listen to Yourself with Kie Davis. This is the jail t Y Plus and I'm really happy to welcome my guest today. He is a research fellow at the Heritage Foundation. He is a contributor to The Blaze on The Fearless Show with Jason Whitlock, and this is my first time meeting him, but I've followed him for a long time and I love his commentary. Please welcome to show, Delano Squires. Delana, Welcome to show, Kiro, Thank you for having me appreciate it. Delana, Where are you from? I am originally from New York. My family is from Barbados, but I grew up entirely in the States in New York, went to school in New York, and I've been when the College in Pittsburgh and have been in the DC area for about sixteen years. Okay, and you so you work at the Heritage Foundation, right, correct? Correct? I work at Heritage. I've been here since last September. And prior to that, I worked close to fifteen years in local DC government, so not the federal government, but city government in a variety of capacities. Last year was in the Office of Gun Violence Prevention. So I've done public facing community work for a long time, for well over a decade and really have a passion for it. And my work with Heritage is connected to a lot of the work that I was doing prior to that. And are you guys still there in Northeast DC? It is the office no Heritage you mean? Yeah? Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes. So we have an office in northeast right on Capitol Hill, so obviously you know Heritage. We do policy think tank, so so close to the Senate Building and Capitol and yeah, I Union station. Fun fact, I went to school at that middle school just a couple of blocks behind you, guys. I yes, I did, for eighth grade, George Hopson Middle School. My family used to live on the street just behind you guys. I spent my years teenage years off and on growing up in Washington. Okay, yeah, that is a fun fact. It is a fun fact. And it's funny because I was at the Heritage Foundation years ago now, a few years ago now, and I really I didn't know. I didn't realize that it was in my old neighborhood. And so I took a walk back to the school and they were working on it, and they were doing construction. It was the summer, and so I was like, hey, I'm I'm a graduate. I haven't been here in twenty years, Like can I just go in and look around? And they were like, sure, come on in, and they had not renovated that school and like thirtieth school I went to when I was thirteen years old. So anyway, I'm I'm familiar with the area of the are in and and I just wanted to throw that out there, but yeah, yeah, yeah it was. It wasn't a very the area is very different now. Back then I'm old. So that was like the eighties, so would have been the late eighties. So back then it was the hood. Everything Union Station wasn't finished or it wasn't anything. It was just it was just the subway station. It was just the Metro in Yeah. I there were no stores in there, like nothing. It was just a gorgeous old building. And then the Embassy was like right across from it, and that was the new big thing over there. But um, yeah, I used to after school. I would walk over. Those are the days when you could walk all the way up the steps of the Capitol Building, and so I would walk over to the Capitol Building. I would do homework sitting on the steps, and I would just watch the sunset. My parents worked all the time. They were professionals, so my dad's stepmom were never there, so I basically have free reign of the city when I was a teenager. It's a miracle. I'm alive. Yeah. Yeah. God loves fools and babies. That's that's what I hear. Well, Delana. One of the things that really sparked my interest in having you on the show was I was reading some commentary from you on Twitter and you were talking about the patriarch and someone was complaining about the patriarchy and you were saying, well, we need to bring the patriarchy back for the black community, Like why are we why are we tearing up the patriarchy Black folks should be cheering for the patriarchy. We really need to bring it back. And I thought, yeah, somebody really needs to say that out loud. But before I ask you to elaborate on that, I want to read a definition of patriarchy. The Dictionary definition says patriarchy is a system of relationships, beliefs, and values embedded in political, social, and economic systems that structure gender inequality between men and women. And technically speaking, the term patriarchy is derived from the term that means rule of the father. So we've decided in this society that the rule of the father promotes inequality. But you're saying that disconnecting ourselves from the patriarchy is what's creating inequality. Yeah, I mean, so let me start here. Um, Yes, I believe that patriarchy is a good thing, sort of rightly defined, and I don't necessarily always agree with dictionary definitions and stuff. Yeah, but I think, you know, leadership, particularly the home by fathers, is a good thing because it's a it's a God thing. It's I think it's God ordained in God design. And and before I'm a black man, in terms of primacy, I'm not talking about chronology right, because I've been black since I since I was conceived. But in terms of the core of my identity is I'm a Christian. I'm a believer. I believe what the Bible says about mankind. I believe that human beings are created in God's image. UM. So when I think about how I define things, whether for the purposes of conversation or cultural analysis of public policy, I go to the Scripture first, because I believe that the designer is the definer. So that's that's my foundation. And because of that, I understand that anything with no head is dead, and anything with two heads as a monster. So at the end of the day, somebody is is going to be leading an institution and organization. And I'm not aware of any any society in which, um the norm is for women to believe that they are responsible for the safety, the protection and provision of adult men and the children that they share together. Now, someone may be aware of such a society, say, you're about to get me riled up here. I'm not. I'm I got on a suit jacket, so I'm trying to be you know, professional. But there are some issues there that we can certainly get into so so my thing is this. I believe, particularly as a husband and the father, my family's well being is my responsibility primarily. And when I made violes to my wife, when I stood before God and family and I committed my life to her for the rest of my natural life, and we said we're committing to one another in a covenant union and our children, I took on that responsibility. And again I look to the scripture, and this tells the Bible tells husbands that they are to love their wives as Christ loved the church, and ultimately Christ gave his life for the church. And if there's any women out there who say, you know what, I want that responsibility for myself. I want to give my life for my husband when when trouble comes, I want to step in front of him and protect him when there's a bump in the night. Because I believe in gender equality, I'll say, honey, you had it last time. I'm a woman. I can do the same thing you do. I'll get it this time. If any woman is willing to sign up for that, I'd be more than willing to talk to them. But I've never found such a woman who's interested in doing that type of thing. So so, yeah, you know, I'm not sure what because I talk about this so often and have had back and forth people so often, I'm not sure which particular tweet you know you're alluding to. I'm sure I said it, and I don't run from it. But but here's the thing. We went from patriarchy as the norm again father you know, father led homes, responsibility of provision and protection falling on the man, to matriarchy. Right certainly, I'd say over the last fifty plus two years, you know, by through public policy, law and popular culture, and now we're in the era of atriarchy where the entire notion of biological sex is trying to be destroyed by by one particular political movement. Um. So, I don't think what we have now is a better substitute than than what we used to have. I'm not saying it's perfect. Um And again, and this is why I start with my worldview, because whenever the scripture gives someone, you know, a responsibility, particular as it relates the hierarchy. So this is husbands and wives, um, you know, or parents and children. The person who has the responsibility right who most people say, well, this is the person in the higher position in the hierarchy. Um they have they have responsibility on both sides because they are instructed to steward that responsibility. Well, so I'm not going to defend men who who use their masculinity to cheat on their wives, to abuse their wives, to abuse their children. That's that's I'm not doing that at all. But but in the same vein, there are plenty of people who you could talk to and say, Look, my mother wasn't sweet at either, right, so she raised me by herself, and she did some things that I didn't like, and my life turned out in a particular way. So this is about order more so than it is about anything else. And I'm a person that believes that men and women are created in God's image, equal in dignity and worth, but different in form and function. So to me, equal does not mean the same. And again, if anyone male or female wants to disagree with that, I'm more than willing to hear hear out a man who says, look, I'm such a feminist. Ally that Again, when something goes bumping a night, or when a road it needs to be removed, or when trash needs to be taken out, or when two feet of snow needs to be shoveled out of the driveway, I hand my wife to shovel, I handed the garbage bag, I handed the rubber gloves, and I say, Babe, I got it last time, but I believe that the future is feminist, so I'll let you have it this time. I'd be more than willing to have a conversation with those people, but somebody tells me that that's not the case. Well, I'm already hearing in my mind people screaming at their devices as they're listening to their interview, going, well, that's all well, and good for you to say. Well, you know, women don't want to be the ones to take out the trash or see that noise, about that noise in the night. But there's so many women. I mean, I'm in my mind, I'm hearing my sister in law right now going, Okay, I don't have a man to do that. Those are the things that I have to do because black men have abandoned our families. And I mean, I can't tell you how many times I have this conversation. I mean, I'm sure I don't need to tell you how many times I have this conversation, particularly within the Black community, about how well you know these there's no men around, we have to be the leaders. I would be happy to support the patriarchy, but the patriarchy doesn't support me. M I mean, I think that's a that's a legitimate concern. And obviously the situation when when a woman is signal single is different than when she's in a relationship, particularly when she's married. Right. So I'm not I'm not telling any woman that she should just throw up her hands at anytime a light bulb needs to be changed and and and put that request out on Twitter and wait for somebody to respond. I'm not saying that. I'm talking about within the context of a relationship, particularly within the context of a marriage, right who who? Who does she see as being responsible for the well being of the family and she and if she says I want that responsibility for myself, then you know, maybe she'll find a guy who's willing to do that. But one of the things that I noticed, and I'm I'm not sure if you've if you've seen this, is you know, there's a subset of a particularly we're talking about the Black community. There's a subset of Black women. I'm thinking of the joy reads. And then Coole Hannah Jones is who, on one hand will say, let women lead in the black community. If you look out for the women, everybody else to be taken care of, right, they want the leadership, And then on in the next second they'll say, oh, we're so tired, nobody's checking on us. Who's looking out for us? And my thing is this, when you ask for the sun, you get the heat and the light, right, or the light and the heat. Let me put it in sort of the respective order. So when you say no, we want the leadership, yes, that that comes with a crown, but it rests heavily on your head. So if that's what you say you want, then you have to deal with those things because most men, again maybe the generation of guys today are different, but men and generation has passed and spend a whole lot of time convection and moaning to people about how hard it is to be a man, and I have so much responsibility. Like my granddad was married to my grandma till he passed, and they raised ten children and a rack of grandchildren and in one home across multiple generations. And and maybe he wrote in his diary every day as he took the cows out and brought the sheep home and he worked his construction job about how hard it is to be a guy. Nobody asked him how he's doing. But my senses that that's that's not how he lived his life. UM. But nowadays everyone because we speak in the language of personal therapy, UM, we demand power and and and you know, seat at the table, and it's my table. But then then we realized, like sitting at the table is more than just eating right. Somebody has to construct it, somebody has to maintain it, somebody has to clean it up. UM. And a lot of people want those those What they see is the benefits, the perks of leadership, but without the responsibilities. And my senses, that's part of the reason that God gave men, you know, broader shoulders is to is to UM, have that responsibility rest on us without feeling like it's meant to destroy us. I was talking about this similar issue with a pastor, UM, and I was asking him. I think we were talking about women in pastoral leadership, which I do not support. UM. And you know a lot I love John MacArthur's answer. You know what do you think, why do you think women can't be pastors? And he says, because the Bible says so. It's like, at some we can we can argue about all of the ins and outs and the nuances and translations, but you know, at the end of the day, it's like, because the Bible says so. But I talked to this pastor and I was like, well, you know what is issue because I know plenty of I mean, it's very common in the Black Church for women to lead or to be pastors. And I know plenty of churches that have female leaders and they do just fine. And I know plenty of women who I think would be fine to take on the responsibility and leadership roles, but we don't. And I agree, you know that this is biblical and and so I'm fine with that. But I'm like, well, why can't women do this work? And he says, Look, he told me this a lot of times. It's not that women can't do something. Women can do most of the things that men do. I mean, there's the physical differences, of course, and stuff like that, but you know, like a woman can lead, a woman can take out the chash, a woman can do this that, and the other it's not that women can't do but but he said, in my experience, where women do, men don't. So you you mentioned the word order, and I think that is a really astute observation that there is an order to think things. And it's not just about men. It's not about men being more capable to take care of people or better than women. It's about it's there's also an order to this relationship. And we, as as counter intuitive as it sounds, we allow men to lead when we step back. We give men the power to lead when we step back, instead of wrestling them for that leadership. I feel like more men would step up if more women step back a little bit to allow them to step up. You know what, does that make sense? No, it makes sense, and I would agree in theory. But here's the thing. Anyone, let's say, under the age of sixty, has spent an entire life marinated and bathe in a post second wave feminist culture. And I've often said that if we were to pull the roots of feminism, like second wave and on feminism out of the culture, it'll probably be harder to get it out of some men, and it will out of some women. Because this is how even you know, young men right fourty end under have been shaped m. They have been taught to see women primarily as way journals, as m complimentary breadwinners. So so if a woman, I've I've seen YouTube, you know, shows where a guy will say, well, what are your bring to the table. It's always it's always single people. They don't know what we're talking about. And a woman will say, I'm the person who's going to turn your house into a home. I'm gonna do this and raise the children. He's like, well, I could pay somebody to do that. And I'm thinking to myself, this guy has been sold. He has been detached from his nature because his grandfather would have never dismissed the critical role that a mother and a wife plays within the household. And this is the thing, like we see the home as basically someplace to rest your head and to store your sneakers. We don't see it as the central hub of productive, relational, economic, spiritual or social activity. But but that's really what the home is supposed to before and everyone has a responsibility to it. My wife, who's you know, when I met her, she was finishing her PhD program. You know, she's she's also a trained, you know, a licensed social worker. She got you know, more formal education than I do. But when when we had our third child, we had we sat down and hid the discussion because she spent all of her days helping people take care of their kids. We were paying someone a mortgage should take care of our kids. At a certain point we said, you know, we should probably cut out the middleman. But but really it took me maturing spiritually in order to get us there. And because I just I didn't grow up that way. None of the women I knew personally, you know, stayed home. They were all very much dedicated to their families. M but that's the economic realities of life, you know, in New York City at that time, just it didn't allow it. Um. But but a big part of it is not just the economics. A big part of it is the values. And I would say one of my biggest issues with again, you know, second way feminism is that it made masculinity the north star for women. And what I mean when I say that is, you know, feminism is a um, cut off my nose to spite your face type of ideology. So the goal of you know, the glorious Steynhams and the ready for Dan's is basically to get women to act, speak, think, and behave like men, to value the same things as men. So so so if a woman heard that there's an all men's gun club or bowling league somewhere and you know, Wisconsin, they say, we need to pick it, and we need access to that right. We need to work as hard as guys and do have sex the way guys do, no strings attached, so on and so on and so forth. But I find it out that the one thing that has come completely exclusive I'm not saying ninety ninety six percent one hundred percent exclusive to women, the the the privilege difficult one day, though it may be, the privilege of bearing and bringing life into the world is the one thing the feminists say, we don't want any part of that right. So so that ideology has detached both men and women from our bodies and our God given nature. So it's one of those things where I think there's a lot of work that needs to be done spiritually, culturally, socially to reconnect us to who we were created to be. And I think that's one of the reasons that I end up talking about this issue so often in particularly in the Black community, which has been female led for decades. I mean, even even the black men who are in sort of titular positions of leadership, pastors, the you know, the heads of some of these organizations have been completely emasculated. Um, I'll say this, and this may be an unexpected pivot, but the reason that someone like Candas Owens has risen to such prominence is because so many black men have abandoned their posts of leadership within the black community. When when I first started to hear Candas Owens, the first the image that came to mind for me was like the opening scene one of the scenes in Malcolm X when because I'm I'll paint the picture. When the clan would show up at a black man's house in the Deep South in nineteen twenties, if the person who opened the door as a teenage girl and she has a rifle in her hand, those men know immediately that either a man is absent, he may be away at work, he may have abandoned his family, he may not even be living. But they know when she opens the door that he's not there, and if he is there, he's not on his post. So when you have such a young woman who is in the position of speaking such hard truth into a community. Part of the reason that's the cases because the men are not doing it. And and that's and and so so as much as people may want to criticize that, I said, look, I understand where she comes from. Maybe if Sharpton and Crump and Jackson and and and you know, Derek Johnson ahead of ACP and Mark Mooreal and Roland Martin and the writers of The Route and the Grio, Marc Lamont Hill and Black News Television would be willing to speak a difficult truth in love. Um you know, once every blue moon there may be someone like her would not have as much prominence, but that's not the case. Um so, so in many respects, I agree with what you're saying, your your premise, which is part of the women that women. Part of the reason that women step forward is because men step back. Um And I think there's a lot of work to repair that because women have been so used to stepping forward, particularly in our community, that attempts for men, for men to step forward now feel like, oh, you're trying to rip the leadership out of my hands. And put me back in the clock, put me back in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant, and so on and so on and so forth, And I think that's something that we also need to address. It's the same FBI under j Edgar Hoover that tried to blackmail Martin Luther King Jr. To commit suicide that is now targeting its other political opponents. And so this isn't a partisan point. I just think it's important to see that. But I think that part of my view is bureaucracy itself is part of the problem. So at the local level, you've got local police and you've got local prosecutors. You don't have a giant investigative bureaucracy sitting in between. At the federal level, you have US Marshals, which, as best I can tell, has not been at all politicized agency. They just carry out their responsibilities. And then you've got a Department of Justice, which I think has some problems of its own, but that's the prosecutor. You don't need this giant bureaucracy sitting in between. And you know what the irony is, it's still the j Edgar who over building of the FBI. Literally the name of the building the people reported to every Day. Check out our interview with Republican presidential candidate Vek Ramaswamy, episode three fifty eight of The Outlaws Radio show. Find us wherever you get your podcast. That's out Laws The Outlaws Radio Show, an FCB podcast. By the way, there is nothing wrong with being in the kitchen, barefoot and pregnant. I think this is the other thing we need to talk about. It was very I find it very interesting that you you had the discussion with your wife. I mean, I same thing, right. I was raised by boomers. I was raised by hippies. My mom always worked. I thought my mom was like an advanced feminist. She like raised me to take care of myself. I had an absent father, and but she later on in her life she told me, no, I always wanted to be a stay at home mom. I just I just couldn't. I wanted to be that like my mother was. But you know, the economic realities have changed. But I and so that's how I was raised. And then when I got married, I had this idea of being a wage earner, a professional. That's what I wanted to do. And then when we decided to have kids, we had the same discussion you had with your wife. You know, someone should stay home, and if you're the major provider for a family, so that someone should be me. And I learned how to be a stay at home mom. I didn't enjoy it. I didn't, I wasn't, I wouldn't. I'm still a stay at home mom. Actually I work, but I'm I work from home. I've always been home. I've always been home for my kids. And I hear a lot of people say, um, well, that's it's not realistic. I you know, and you talked about the realities of living in a place like New York. I understand that. Unfortunately life is like this a lot of times. But a lot of times, this is what I'm getting to. We can afford to leave a parent home with the kids. We don't want to make the sacrifices necessary. My husband and I moved from the Midwest to the most expensive place on earth, southern California, with two small children. And I did not take a job. I didn't have a job. We live we live in the upper class, you know section of California. It's life is expensive here, and yet we paired down to almost nothing. We had one car. We shopped at the discount stores. We didn't go on vacations, we didn't even go to the beach very much because that was gas money. And I think this is one I'm getting it. I think like there we need to normalize also again the idea of like it's ok it's not just okay for a woman to be like, yeah, I'm going to stay home and make this home and raise the kids. It's actually necessary. And I think we're doing the family, particularly the black family, a disservice by normalizing the idea that both parents should be out of the house and earning the home is I think a lot of like you talking about Joy Reid and you know, all of the strong women out there who are or you even talked about Mark Lamont Hill and the writers of The Grio and the Route I'm willing about all a lot of those people were raised by working women. There is something about a woman being in the home that softens the family, even if you're not that great, Like I am not a great stay at home mom, I'm not a great homemaker. I'm not you know, very organized, I'm not a great cook, But just being in the home I think has been enough and the right thing. And I think we need to normalize that. Yeah. And some people will try to say, well, no, you know, we we do value stay at home moms and so on and so forth, But I don't buy it. And here's why. Um our culture, and this is across the board, across ethnicities, champions any woman who manages a large and complex organization. We said, oh, she's leaning in, right, she's unless it's her home mm. And we champion women who dedicate their lives daycare, raising their kids unless it's unless it's their own children, right, you know, she's a daycare work or a teacher. Oh, teachers are the most important people in the country. But but if if you're if you say, you know what, I'm going to be an exclusive tutor to these two three, four, one, you know, one, two, three, five, six, seven, ten kids. But then my kids, then all of a sudden, it's like, oh, is that is that all you do? And I know that those messages sometimes implicit exploiced to get through because one of the things that people do when they are trying to ascribe dignity to something that they feel is not really being value is they come up with fancy language, right, so I remember, you know, somewhat related story over a decade ago, you know, when me and my parents were moving my sister into her dorm as an undergrad, and I had on you know, a Dickey's overall, right, and I joked and I said, oh, I'm I'm you know, instead of saying, you know, I'm the moving guy, I said, I'm the you know, the logistics engineer. Right now. Again, I'm just an older brother. But but in that language, where I was trying to do is sort of dress up something that subconsciously I thought, well, it was not It's not all that cool the saying year the moving guy, but a logistics engineer or that sounds like a like a job, real status. And I think that's what people try to do. You know when when if if a woman saying I'm a home engineer, whatever the terms are, right, I think women who do that are responding to what they get from the culture. And what they get from the culture is if you're a woman who dedicates your life, even if it's a short, you know, period, it may be your kid's formative ears until they get old enough to be in school. But if you do that, you are robbing yourself, or you are missing out on meeting your true potential, which is in the workplace. So if you're supporting Jeff Bezos's empire and building up his you know, family's wealth and overseeing his you know, workforce and and sort of human capital staff, then you're really using you know, your your intellect and your emotional intelligence for the greater good. But if you are concentrating those efforts, those skills, those God given abilities, those passions on your own household, oh now, now it's a big difference. And one of the things that I think brings some conflict into relationships between many women is that a lot of guys understand intuitively that they may be between the first and the fourth most respected band in a woman's life, after her father, after her dad, and after her boss. You care. You remember when when um MTV had making the band, if he was making them people, they were walking over the Brooklyn Bridge to go get chef steak from Juniors, right, and it's wow, we were sharing them all. Look, you know, because we understood the pot of gold that was in at the end of that bridge literally and figuratively. But if her husband asked his wife to make him a sandwich, right, and and and and this is and this goes on and this is on TikTok guy posted saying, you know, I asked my wife to make me a sandwich, then it's oh, man, she's being oppressed by the pat triarchy. But if a boss asked to said, you know, I need to go get some coffee from me, and he said it just like that, go get me some coffee. Right. But but if if he makes enough money, and if and if that job has enough status, then it said, oh wow, she's you know, she's a real you know, high powered working woman. So so we we understand what order looks like, we understand what hierarchy looks like, we understand what respect looks like. Yeah, it's just we don't value it within the context of marriage in the home. I love that. That is so good and I think we we do. We need to reframe. And this is this was always my work coming to the end of our time here. But um, this is always my issue. It's a it's my issue with anything anything that's wrong. I'm a conservative because I'm I'm black, working and serving in the black community really changed how I viewed the world. And one of the things that I actually ended. I used to run it after school program in UM, Indiana, and I was on a list serve back in the day before we had our chat rooms. We would do email list serves and with the directors from of these programs from across the country, and this would have been in the early two thousands. UM and I got kicked out because UM there was a thread going about what how can I serve the we were all inner city directors, how can I serve these inner city kids. I'm having trouble with discipline in our program and me serving an exclusively black population and having a lot of boys in the program and understanding that fathers were missing completely just like benignly, I thought everyone else thought the way I thought. And I was just like, well, you need more men in there. You need some men in your program. It's going to help a lot when the men and I got a private message from the list serve manager and he was like, that's just scriminatory, that is like anti LGB. There was no t at the time, and we have to let you go. Now I'm the only black director on this threat. But because I had said this thing about normalize, you know, bringing men in Anyways, I got kicked out because of that. But one of the things that I say all the time is like, we need to normalize the idea of having a strong male presence. And I love that there are so many women stepping up and doing things when they have to. I'm one of those women too. I know you Sometimes you've gotta do what you gotta do. You've got to pull up your plants and go do what you gotta do. But I will tell you what a lot every ill I think, and I think you are confirming this with your comments today. It can be sovolved with a solid base at home. Everything starts at home, and I feel like too few people these days have a home. Yeah. Absolutely, I mean I'm not surprised you've got that response pict that in that day and age, because again, and I'm not saying this is exclusive to the life, but when people sort of deny God's design for the world, when they say, you know, we're just evolved from startusts and we can sort of make reality in whatever way that we want, then you're going to have a bunch of these sort of downstream you know, social and cultural issues. So I mean there was a point where, you know, marriage and family were a buffet. Marriage was the price that you paid for the benefits of lifelong companionship and for the privilege of becoming a mother or a father. But now switch that to ola carte sort of deal where you can say, well, I want the baby, but not you can say I want the baby. I don't even want the man. I just want to seed, right, so I can I can get that from a database. Or you can say, well, you know, we're consciously co parenting and and we're testing it out. We're not ready for marriage yet because that's a lifelong commitment, but we want to have a kid. So I think a lot of what we're finding now is that a lot of these issues that we're facing because we reject, you know, the natural order. And yes, I think men play an extremely critical role in the rearing of their children because I don't. And I get this from my friend, you know, Katie Foles, who's up in Seattle. She's like, there's no such thing as parenting. There's mother ring and his father ring. And I said, I never thought of it that way, but and I don't know, you have kids, so you know this. The most sexist people in the world are children, because even at a young age, they react very, very differently to the present, to the voice of their mothers and their fathers. Um My son's particularly, I have two girls and two boys. My sons interact with me in a way that's very well, it's actually not different than how they interact with their mom. And it's just she doesn't like it because they like to headbut and pinch and bite and scratch and punch, and she's like, why are they doing this? So what their boys by? Right? Yeah? So I think this the notion that androgyny is equality. It is something that needs to be struck from our culture, from our politics, from our from our political rhetoric, because again, we think standing down the differences between men and women is a good thing. And I think what we're doing is we're swimming against the current, right, We're swimming against the tide, We're cutting against the grain. Um So, yeah, I'm with you. I think a strong male presence in the home, i'ms absolutely critical if it takes two to make, it takes two to raise and and let me I just want to be clear, I'm not talking about since you relationship and co parent. I'm talking when I speak ideals. I'm talking about marriage, right, I met the term co parenting. I hate the term, yeah, because it's like it First of all, it's always referring to to single people who are I guess we're supposed to stand and give them standing ovation because they're being nice to each other to raise their kids. But I'm like, Okay, if they're co parenting, what are me and my husband doing? You know what I mean? Like, why what's so special about what they're doing? And yet what I'm doing is like, oh, it's just a boring old parenting. Right. I hate that. I hate the term, but let me let me say this because I think, you know, again, people come up with terms to sort of justify, you know, their behaviors and and I have a ton of respect for parents who say, look, our relationship didn't work out for one reason or the other, but we still understand we have a responsibility to our children much respect. My issue was with sort of the conscious coparenting movement. I'm thinking about Van Jones, who's up and said, oh, I want to have a baby, so he just him as a mother woman. I don't even know what they're in a relationship, so that we'll just have a baby and we're consciously coparent. So it's the people who go into it saying we have no desire for we're putting carriage before marriage. There's why I have an issue. But here's another piece. So much of our commentary around the home and the breakdown of the home, particularly the Black community, is about what happens when the father's sort of resources and protection are removed from the household. We've seen what that has done. And some people will say, well, well, the government can step in, and I'd argue that the government is an unfaithful husband and an absent father because this has too many households of support. But there's another thing that we don't discuss often enough, which is the duties and responsibilities that husbands and wives have to one another. Right, it's not just about the kids, Because God forbid, if I felt sick or you felt sick, or my wife or your husband, we took a vow to be with one another through sickness and in sickness and in health. No such vow exists in any child support order that I've ever heard of, or in any sort of conscious co parenting agreement, whether formal or informal. So So when you see a woman, you know, going through chemotherapy for breast cancer and her husband is right there by her side, shaving his head in solidarity and saying, baby, I'll be with you to the end. Like that's a real thing. If you if you try, if if if, if I had, you know, five kids by four different women, and I call each of them, I say, oh, girl, i'm sick. You know, I'm going through treatments. They said, well, sorry, yeah, you're gonna be able to pick up junior. You know, because they're they are not obligated nor dedicated to me as a man, as their husband. Right, my role, you know, with respect to them is my role as father to our shared children. That is not the same thing. So I think what we do when we when we disconnect you know, marriage and families, we say, okay, we make it all about the kids and not about God's design of man and woman for one another. Our bodies literally fit together like a hand in the glove. And that's why any other orientation doesn't work. Right. You don't have to be a Christian to understand that. You just have to understand nature rightful. Correct. If everybody followed, if the whole world said two men or two women just the same. In two hundred years, you'd have an empty planet and the wolves and the buffaloes would reign on the earth. So so yeah, I'm I think you and I on the same page that the natural order, that God's design for family is the ideal design. Nothing is ever perfect. All of us have been married, over married parents or grandparents understand that nothing is perfect. But being single for an entire life by choices is not perfect either, because there's a lot of people who can't even get on the same page with themselves from day to day. So there's there's no perfect sort of relationship model. So I don't sell that in the public square. Ye. Well, what I'm saying is if you want multi generational prosperity, not just in terms of resources, but in terms of you know, health, and and you know faith and culture, the ideal way to do that is according to God's design. And I and I and I'll end here. For a community that speaks so much about generational wealth, you would think that we would pay more attention to our generations. Because I was saying this to my wife yesterday, and we know some guys like this. If you're a man, you have four kids by four different women, none of whom you live with. If you're fulfilling your responsibilities, your check is being split five ways. So when I was growing up, you know, I went to summer camp in Crown Heights in Brooklyn, and I would hear people say, oh, in the Jewish community, one dollar circulates fifteen times before it before it leaves the community. So that's great. But if you're a man and you're paying child support to four different households, you're one dollar can't even circulate one time. It makes a quarter of a revolution an outdoor four different ways. So we need to get our act in order if we want the things that we say that we want, Because as soon as you pour a bunch of money into a community that has broken families, it's going to go right through all the holes and into the hands of everybody who's waiting underneath. Say, I don't think that's good A good way to go about doing business. This is the perfect way to end this. Yes, I'm at church. Yeah, No, I love what you said. I wrote this down because I'm gonna I'm gonna get off this podcast. I'm gonna actually write about this because I love what you say about. Look, if we're concerned about generational wealth, then the black people need to be concerned about the family. If we want generational wealth, then we need to start telling each other the hard truth. Yes you do need a man in the house. Yes you do need to get married. Yes you do need to finish high school. And actually those are the only things that I mean. It's a very simple formula. The statistics having changed, and in eighty years you finish high school, get married, to stay married, your family has like a ninety five higher percent chance than someone who didn't do those things of amassing wealth and being middle class. So we do it. Let's bring back the patriarchy, love a father. We do need that. It's like you say, Dolana, it's not perfect. None of us are perfect. Our relationship, dads aren't perfect, wives aren't perfect. But the order, God's order is perfect. And when we honor it, I think we experienced success. And I think that's why you can look to other racial communities and see, like you said, the Jewish community that you grew up around, you know, you can see you can here in southern California, that would be the Asian community. You can their families. These are families that are together, They live together, they stay together, they care for each other till death, you know, parents, multi generations in one home. Absolutely, yeah, I'm sorry. I'm about to start a whole other podcast here. I gotta let you go because you gotta. You have another engagement. Tell everybody before we go where they can find you online. Sure, Probably the best place to follow me is on Twitter. I try to stay out of trouble, varying degrees of success from day to day at Delano Squire's d E L A n O s q U I R E s all one string. Same thing on Instagram, but I post much more on Twitter and articles commentary, So so yeah, that's probably the best way to find funding. Well, thank you so much for being with us today. I really appreciate a great time talking to you. Likewise, thank you. I hope to do it against a Brandon all my soda Day that we won't staying and we won't stay all we gott it? Does no one get take Thatato and bath It's gonna be okay, Brad, are my soda day that we won't saying and we won't say all we got it? Does no one get Takedato and Don Bay It's gonna be okay. This has been a presentation of the FCB podcast Network, where real talk lifts. Visit us online at FCB podcasts dot com.
