Steve Biddulph: Raising Boys with Heart

0:04Today we have an incredible guest, someone whose work has shaped the way we understand childhood parenting and masculinity. Steve Biddulph is one of the world's most influential psychologists and parenting educators. For over four decades, his books like Raising Boys, Raising Girls and The New Manhood have helped millions of families understand how to raise emotionally healthy, resilient children. He's been a pioneer in challenging outdated ideas and masculinity, shining a light on the precious boy's face and offering parents a roadmap to raising kind, confident and emotionally intelligent men.

0:42In this conversation, we'll explore the biggest challenges facing boys today, from mental health struggles to toxic online influences and what we as parents can do to guide them towards a healthy, positive sense of masculinity. Steve's wisdom is both practical and deeply compassionate. And I know you're all going to take away so much from this episode. Steve, thank you so much for joining us. It's a pleasure to have you here. Hi, Jolie and Elliot and everybody listening. It's fantastic to have a chance to talk to you. So everyone knows it's 10 p.m. here in the UK and it's 9 a.m. in Tasmania where you are.

1:21So Steve's feeling all full of vigor and ready to go. Thanks for staying up late for me. Oh, don't be silly. It's staying up late for you any day, Steve. Right, let's dive in. In Raising Boys, you talk about three key stages of boyhood. Can you walk us through them and explain why understanding these phases is so important for parents? Sure. And first, something I really have to explain is that I don't ever talk or write as some kind of expert. I think experts are a terrible thing in the parenting world. And so the things that I'll be offering today are just things to try on. And if they fit, that's really great.

2:13And if they don't, just toss them out. That's totally fine. Because what I started doing when I became a psychologist 40 years ago was I just hung out with parents, first of all in a clinic and then in small groups and then eventually with, you know, 500 or 1 ,000 parents at a time. That was my day job. And so I've probably been talking to more parents than anyone else on the planet. and so you get a feeling of what people need and then you go and look for it to find out what might help so it's a kind of anti-expert it's kind of like here's what I've found is this any use and if people really like it then it goes into the books and so so really Raising Boys was written by the 30 ,000 parents that I talked to at that stage and so the three stages of boyhood that you are ask about Ajoli, turned out to be one of the things people really, really liked.

3:18They found it helpful. And I think it's always the case with raising kids or anything. It just helps to have a map. And a map tells you kind of where to aim for and where to steer and where to get through. And so the three stages are very, very simple. It's no problem to remember. It's 0 to 6, 6 to 14. and 14 to 25. And the 25 keeps getting stretched out further because boyhood seems to last quite a long time, but we can talk about that later. But it means that as you're kind of, as a family, you're planning what to do with your time and your resources and what to aim for long-term, you kind of know what's going to be needed when.

4:04Does that sort of make sense? Oh, it does make sense. And those stages really make sense to me as well. Yeah. That's great. So for people listening, I'll say what they actually are, what's going on now, is that from naught to six is the little boy years, where little boys, even more than girls, are very tender and very needing of affection. And they're basically, they're learning to love. and it's always variable and everything we'll be saying today in the podcast it can be the complete reverse whether it's dad or it's mom or boys and girls there's lots of overlap but generally little boys are in their mom's world from naught to six and and they're learning from mom to both to be loved and to love back and to love life um and and so dads can play a huge role and they can even be the primary carer, which is one of the great things about human beings.

5:07We're very flexible in what we can do. But most often, relative to mum, a dad is like light entertainment in the first six years. And so what has to happen is to be able to make it possible for mums and boys to be as chilled as possible so they feel safe. They feel like there are supports around them and that no one's hassling them so that they can settle into that sweet time of being with a little child because boys' mental health seems to be a bit more fragile and need to be really, really sense of peace and safety. And then at six, there's a thing that happens. And these are kind of hormonal kind of stages.

5:58and because when I was young I travelled a lot in my late teens. I lived in Papua New Guinea in the rainforest with kind of tribal situations, hunter-gatherer situations and I was always interested. How come other people do such a good job of, you know, raising their kids to be so, you know, six-year-olds in Papua New Guinea would be looking after one-year-olds and doing it really, really well, for example at the age of six there's a change that happens and when i tell my audiences this they everyone nods their heads little boys seem to notice their dad and and they're kind of sort of you picture it's like a little boy's holding on to mom you know holding on to mom's hand she's the kind of the bedrock of his life but she's kind of she's just always there you know she's taken for granted sort of things by this stage and so he's holding on to mom but he's looking at dad, you know, and pulling dad in.

6:59And I think what happens is he's just dawning on him. I'm male. I'm going to turn into a man. And I have to study how to do that. And how do you do male? But whatever happens, somehow little boys kind of gravitate much more. They want to be with their dad and go places with him. And one of the things that we say to dads is, this is your window. At the age of six, a little boy thinks his dad is Superman. He thinks he's amazing. And if you're a dad listening to this, of course, you want your son to have your values and have your standards and qualities, the philosophy of life and things like that.

7:44This is your moment because from six to 14, he will want to be with you. and that doesn't last forever because what happens at 14 is this is the the testosterone peak um testosterone starts to kick up at 13 and its first impact is to make you um but it's very disruptive it makes you kind of dopey and disorganized as it starts to creep up so 13 year olds are just hopeless just totally hopeless but but at 14 the testosterone levels in a boy's bloodstream have increased by 800%. Wow. Yeah, I can see your eyebrows hitting the roof there. And that's the most testosterone a boy will ever have in his body at the age of 14.

8:35Yes, that's the most he will ever have. And what it does is it makes them twitchy. It's like they're jumping out of their skin. And even argumentative, we say a 14-year-old boy will argue with a road sign. Great. I'm really looking forward to this, Steve. I've got an 11-year-old. Well, the main thing to realize is that however great, whether it's two dads raising a boy or two mums or a dad and a mum or a mum on her own, it's still the same thing, that at 14, the boy feels like he needs a wider pool to draw on. See, the world got very confused about what masculinity was, as if it's something that resides inside the person somehow and different people have different amounts.

9:30It's not that. What masculinity is, it's a river, and the river flows through the culture. And if the boys receive a healthy, broad, tender, brave sense of masculinity, bundle that into themselves and that becomes theirs. Now, no dad is ever what a boy always only wants. Dads and sons often are a real mismatch. The dad's a real academic and the boy wants to do sport or the boy's very physical or the dad's a sporting guy and the boy just wants to paint or do ballet. And it's almost guaranteed that they won't match. And so, and we do our, you know, through love, we find common ground. But we're sensing, every dad senses, look, I know I'm just not all my son needs.

10:30And so, Elliot, I see you nodding your head to that. And I'd love to hear what you think, but I'll just finish this bit off and see what you think. We go looking, what we have to do is look for other male figures who will flesh out and broaden out. So the gay man next door or the guitar teacher who's really, really great with kids and encouraging them and a terrific school teacher and one of the uncles that just really clicks with them so that when a boy doesn't want to have anything to do with his dad, you know the dads and the sons all go away and so your son can talk to other kids dads and you talk to their and and so we we create a community from 14 to 25 it's it's it's usually the state we miss we just boot our boys into the world and they are not at 14 they are so not ready that we have to build in masculine supports for that final stepping stone into manhood which is carried by the other man and with dad on the sidelines is keeping an eye that it's all okay and so there's that like it's three bounces mom dad mentors manhood yeah yeah steve do you think

11:51Steve Biddulph:um i definitely agree with that in regards to like no dad can just be everything that's an that's an unreasonable request that's a really difficult task but at the same time do you feel like a lot of dads are comfortable with admitting that and comfortable with actually seeking other men to be mentors and figures to their sons I feel like a lot of men may have too much pride and ego to admit that maybe they can't be everything what will be found in your experience Yeah, well, this is the bigger question of why are men so messed up, which was really the mission of my life. I was only about 27, young family therapists, when I just, why are the men so messed up?

12:40The women are doing pretty well. And what it is, is that this thing we uncovered in the 20th century that's called the father wound. And sometimes I will have a hundred men, and similar to the work you do, I think, Elliot, you get a hundred men in the room, and they're there to learn about fatherhood. And I put the question to the men. when they've settled in and they're kind of starting to lower their defenses a little bit. I say, you're here because you want to be a good dad. How do you get along with your own dad? And it's like I've got a hand grenade out of my briefcase, lobbed it into the room, the reaction, you know, how do I get on with my own dad?

13:32Some of the men look like thunder and they kind of spit it out. I don't. You know, I don't get along with my own dad. I don't waste my time. And if you have a show of hands, and I'd be, you know, just get people listening to predict what'll happen here, what the numbers will be out of 100 men, who's estranged from their father? How many men never speak to him? It's 30 % of the men. You know, almost a third of the men are completely estranged from their own dads. Shocking figure. Another 30 out of 100 will say, oh, yeah, well, I see him at birthdays and Easter and things, but it's always a bit prickly.

14:20He's always having a go at you or something. So they've got a relationship, but it's cactus. And what have we got left? We've got another 30 % who are dutiful. So they show up, they discuss the football. well, can't wait to get away, visit the nursing home once a month, you know, that kind of, it's better than nothing. If I was in a nursing home, it would be better than nothing. But if you're doing your maths now, we've got 10 % of men left, and these guys always wait till the last before they speak. And then they say, well, you know, I understand what the other guys are saying, but in fact, my old man is amazing.

15:05he's a fantastic dad. And they have tears in their eyes when they say it. I couldn't design a better dad than my dad is. And if I had problems or worries, I would always go and talk to my dad. And it's not that we always agree, but it's that he's on my side. And so if we go back to the big picture, We've got 90 out of 100 men have a father wound and they're not close to him. And so their own fathering lacks that kind of sense of steady confidence to both to hold their child and, as you asked, Elliot, to let go of their child and trust that he'll be back. He won't love you less.

15:52Steve Biddulph:I can feel myself tearing up as you're saying that. I think I'm lucky enough to be in that 10%. And we do actually a similar kind of exercise. we ask the dads about who's in their support network and they have to fill out an 11 aside team football team with their support network and then we flip it at the end and say do you think if your child wrote their support network that you would be in it and that question is always like oh would i push your limits train with precision see the results at equinox that's high performance loving. Everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox.

16:29Start today at equinox.com.

16:33Steve Biddulph:Would I be in my child support network? So what you're saying there is very emotional, very, very emotional. Do you think a lot of it is sort of generational trauma, Steve? Do you think it's just being handed down from man to man to man? Yes, Jolie, that explains exactly. Men got hammered in the 20th century you know and as we know from being yorkshire yorkshire kids there were wars there was industrialization that took the men down mines and pits and factories and it was trauma after trauma after trauma you know my granddad was in the trenches at the somme um he was not a very relaxing man to be around for my dad my dad was a million miles better than that in his warmth and affection.

17:21But he had a lot of trouble with language. He couldn't put words together. So it was great when we were little, but not so good with teenage years. And so you're right. We had no idea how much traumatized and wounded men were. But in spite of that, we have turned around fatherhood. You know, Elliot's generation are just so different. And if you can, and this is kind of my therapist speaking, If you can examine your own wounds, you will not wound your own children. And I think that's true for mums. It's just as much. You know, when you can say, you know, yeah, my dad belted me and I hated it and I hated him.

18:08And it was awful. Then if that's conscious and it's really there and you're feeling the pain of that, There's no way you could belt your kids. And even though the impulse would come up, my wife Sharon was belted a lot as a little girl. And she said when our little kids were just born and just growing up, she could feel the belting reflex come into her shoulder. You know, like she could feel it there. Because that's what happened every time when she was little and startling to experience. That's where that comes from. And there is no way. So we vowed, you know, we vowed as a young couple and we worked for years in this space, you know, helping people to not belt their kids.

18:55It was good therapy for us. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I asked people if they had a specific question for you when I knew we were interviewing you. And it was astonishing how many mothers messaged me and said, I'm either still with the father of my children or not with the father of my children. I'm worried about the influence he is having on my sons because for some of them, they had split up with the father of the children. He now had gone full red pill. You know, he was in the manosphere. He had become a misogynist. He wasn't a very nice person. And for others, they said they were still with their partner, but their partner shouted a lot.

19:38Their children struggled with emotion and affection, and they were worried that that was going to pass to their sons. And they asked me to ask you about that. What do they do in that situation? Particularly, you know, I really felt the single parents who were saying, I have joint custody and I have no control over what's happening to my sons when he's with my, with the father. and I'm really worried about it. Yeah, okay. It's a really, really important question. But the main thing to say is that since you were at one stage married to that controlling man and living with him with your child, good on you for getting out of there.

20:22The best thing you could have ever done for your kids was to get away from that. And so three-quarters of the job is done. Now, the remaining quarter, of course, is a source of great pain that he goes to be with his dad and his dad is feeding him this kind of poison. And so let me just paint a picture for everyone. I worked with a little boy once who would travel between his mum's and his dad's house and he would go on foot and he was about eight years old. He would walk to dad's house on the weekends and come back with his little suitcase walking. and there was a paling fence on the way and the paling fence had had 20 palings and the little boy would count 10 palings and then he would move into dad mode and he would count the next 10 palings and be off to his dad's house because he knew and kids know this and they can do this even at eight the rules are different at dad's house.

21:30I won't get hit at mum's, I'll get hit at dad's. I can joke with mum, I can't joke with dad. And so if you're the parent who is the one who is the safe haven, and it could be either gender, but if you're the one who's the safe haven, then you can prepare your child and say, Jeremy, I know when you're with your dad, you'll have to do things just to get along. and maybe even say things just to get along. And I know that you can do that and it's totally fine because you've got to get through the weekend. And there's some really good things about your dad as well as some mixed up things. He's not a bad person deep down.

22:12And so if you have really good fun with him and you have nice times with him, I'm really happy about that. But I disagree with your dad about this stuff. and so I don't think people should control other people on any basis, gender or any other basis you know I treat you kindly and I treat you with respect and you treat me with respect and that's why we were able to be close and safe with each other that's why I wasn't able to be close and safe with your dad when he used to yell and try and control me and so have a great weekend with your dad if there's things you're uncomfortable about we'll talk about them when you get back home and we'll get through this together and when you're 18 you'll be able to choose where you go and when and make up your own mind this is the second time i'm feeling teary in the in the first we've only been here for half an hour you're gonna set me off yeah is this is this making sense guys is that too big enough for that idea of you know you help your kid to to adapt yeah Yeah, I mean, you just, when you say it, you just picture.

23:21I mean, I'm still with the partner of my children, but I just couldn't imagine having to do that and know that the discomfort and the pain that it would cause me to send my child off to somebody who I'd lost all trust in and faith in would be really tough. I mean, that is great advice, and I think it will give a lot of people a lot of comfort. But if you're still with somebody, if you still live with them, you're still in a relationship with them, but you feel maybe they are traumatized from their relationship with their dad. And as the mother, you believe they're passing it on to the son. What advice would you give in that scenario?

24:04Yeah, this is a really subtle or tricky sort of thing because I don't think that it's women's jobs or wives' jobs to fix the mental health of husbands. You know, I'm neurodivergent, and so my wife Sharon helps me to be a parent. And so I'm very open to being coached. If there's any question, she's just nearly always the one who's right.

24:29But dads who are struggling, I think, need other dads to get support and ideas from. And it's one of the things that's happened with the work of people doing what Elliot does, but with my books, people, you know, thousands of, when manhood, my book, manhood came out, thousands of men's groups sprang up and dads got together with other dads. And some of those men's groups are still going 25 years later. Some of their members have died of old age. Some of them have gone through all kinds of, some of them have changed gender, all kinds of things have happened. But men need to be around other men with their own space to discuss fathering and fatherhood and to get out of where they're stuck.

25:14But at the same time, Of course, you know, when you're in bed at night time and you say, you know, you kind of lost it with, you know, you kind of lost it with the kids today. Was there something, are you under a bit of stress? And they say, oh, hell yeah, you know, I'd had a really terrible time at work. I just had a headache and I'm sorry, but I shouted too loud at the kids and they can own it and wear it, you know, if it's a not accusatory sort of vibe. And so when a couple works well as a team, they're always kind of coming back to that, you know, are you okay? And actually, no, I'm not. And, you know, I was, you know, it could be both either way.

25:59You know, I was pretty horrible to the kids. And it's never to do with the kids. This is the thing with parenthood. You know, our lives are, you know, people have crap lives. And in Britain, you know, you have the longest working hours in the world. You've had a government for a long period of time that was just really not supportive of families. Hopefully that's changing. But it's tough. And so the big world hammers us. And then we're supposed to come home and be really kind of cool and chill with our children. There's a big battle. It's kind of community versus capitalism going on. And Elliot's, you know, both of you are really in the front lines of that saying a good company respects parenting time.

26:48You know, everyone goes home at five o 'clock. People have parental leave, maternity leave. There's a lot of this is not our faults. It's how horrible the world around us is. And so as a couple, we have to be like, this is hard. Remember we love each other. Remember to laugh. And particularly what I say, have a think about the vibe in your house. What's happened to the vibe? Is yours a kitchen where people put on loud music and dance around the kitchen? Or is it a place with 15 to-do lists on the fridge and where people rush through as they go about, you know? And have you got any say over that, you know?

27:36Have your kids got too many activities going on? is everyone in their bedrooms watching a screen. That's not a family. That's a boarding house. Yeah. Creating moments for families to come together, I think is really important in the modern world because we do just tend to zone out and stare at screens sometimes. And just slightly flipping that, another question that I did get from people, and I struggle with this as well. One of my sons can get quite angry and he struggles with the emotion of anger and he's very honest about it and he'll say I can feel it I can feel the anger coming and I don't know what to do with it and I don't know how to cope what um and I never know what to say to him he looks at me sort of help me I don't know what to do with this emotion and how to handle it and if I don't say anything or I give him a big hug and then you know but he he wants to punch something and he wants to he wants to burn the house down you know he wants to do the rage thing what do you what what would you do in that scenario i'm i'm going to try and answer this in a slightly slightly more general way because i i'd want to take you as a family and spend three hours just and we can't do that um can we not i mean i I can come to Tasmania.

28:59Not today, Jolie. And so there's a couple of things that happen. And I've written a book just last year called Wild Creature Mind. And it's a book about how to use your body to get to the bottom of these strong, uncomfortable feelings. And so there's a few possibilities to float by with this. one is that in the wild creature approach what you do is you say to your child okay let's just sit with this for a minute and you sit down and and and you as a parent you kind of settle yourself and you breathe a bit and get into your body and settle into your body and then you ask them okay so go into go into your body and and whereabouts does this feeling live it's and there's a form of words, and perhaps one day we can do a podcast just about this because it's worth unpacking properly, but there is something in me that is angry is a better way to say it than I am angry.

30:07Okay, there's something in me. And so whereabouts does this feeling live? Call him Jeremy. Where does it live? And children will know. They'll say, oh, it's tight around my heart or it's in my tummy or it's my shoulders and arms or something like that. And you just sit with it and say, okay, it's in your shoulders, it's in your arms. I was sitting with a friend who'd lost his wife after 60 years of marriage and he said, it's in my throat. I can just feel this. My throat is like a stone. And as he just was able to sit with that and make space for it, suddenly this great sob came out of him and he just cried for the first time and just was weeping.

30:54So it was one of the most moving things I've ever seen and been with. Because our body has things going on and it's working. The anger, if that's what it is, is there for a reason. Since being at home with mum is not a dangerous place and not a place where you're feeling boxed in, then it's very likely that it's not anger. And 90 % of male anger is actually anxiety. And as males, there's a kind of a leaning to frame it as anger. And so I paint a picture again for people listening of a family and they're at home on a Saturday morning and there's a car skids outside the house. They hear a car skidding and they go out the front door and their dog has gone out on the street and a car has crashed into their dog.

31:49And there's a dad and a little boy standing on the curb. And the little boy can see his beloved dog lying in the road. And the dad has come from the male background of the industrial era and perhaps he's even been a soldier or a paramedic or something. And the little boy brims with tears. And if you're around a little boy who is, anyone around anyone who's having feelings it stirs up your own feelings and so the dad experiences you know 1950s dad 1970s dad even you know i feel like i'm going to explode with if i have these feelings i don't know that i'll ever be saying again and now that's not true feelings never take anywhere bad but he has to stop that feeling and so he says to the boy you know it's only a bloody dog.

32:42You know, we'll get another bloody dog. Snap out of it. Stupid dog should never run out here. It's no fault. And the little boy's going, you know, buttoning it up and on his way to being an explosive man, you know, it's impossible to live with when he... Push your limits, train with precision, see the results. At Equinox, that's high performance loving. Iconic spaces that inspire. Personal training backed by real data, unlimited group fitness classes from yoga and Pilates to strength and conditioning. Elevate your post-performance ritual with saunas, steam rooms, cold plunges, and more. Everything you need to lock in and unlock your potential at Equinox.