Rebecca: Hello and welcome to the Bare Marriage podcast.  This is Rebecca Lindenbach, not Sheila Gregoire because they are on vacation, and we are taking over for today.

Connor: That’s right.

Rebecca: Today I am joined by my husband, Connor.  Say hi, Connor.

Connor: Hi, Connor.

Rebecca: And we are going to have a conversation all about an article that just blew up a couple of weeks ago now where someone decided that the take to have was to go after the most beloved children’s show in the current generation, which is Bluey.

Connor: Yeah.  And this is a show that’s not just beloved by kids but also by parents because it’s actually entertaining and gives a really good portrayal of the parents’ side of things.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  It’s something where you watch it and you just feel like, yes, this is how life should be.  It’s lovely.  And it’s just wild that someone setting out for—we are going to also talk to Rick Pidcock, who wrote an amazing article in response from his perspective as a stay-at-home dad.  But I would actually really like to start out this whole podcast by just reading a little bit of that article.

Connor: So the article in question here is an article that was written by Jeremy Pryor.  At first, it was just on his personal Substack, and then it was republished on—where was it?   

Rebecca: The Blaze.

Connor: The Blaze.  So he wrote this article.  And in it, he talks a lot about Bluey and the red flags with how fatherhood is portrayed in the character Bandit, who is the dad in the show.  A character that I absolutely love.  There are a lot of kids’ shows that I just can’t really tolerate watching because they’re so annoying and grating.  But this is a show that’s actually just when the kids are watching it I can watch a long and chuckle.  It seems like a lot of it is written to me as a parent.  So he writes this article questioning whether Bluey’s dad, Bandit, is a positive role model and makes a lot of comparisons to Abraham.  And basically, one of his big takeaways is that the problem with Bandit is that he’s this emotionally involved dad, who is constantly playing with his kids, engaging in their imaginative worlds, teaching them, doing a lot of the motherly stuff while there’s a bit of an inside joke about when does Bandit find time to actually work and do his job.  And Jeremy Pryor’s complaint is that the dad’s job is not to do any of that emotional connection, any of that kind of stuff.  His job is to go and expand territory, make money, acquire influence, be powerful.  The mom should stay at home and do all this stuff, and he makes comparisons to Abraham, who he considers to be the Bible’s prototype of what fatherhood should look like.  

Rebecca: Which is a take I will say.  That’s a take.  

Connor: He says there such a strong—the Bible gives such a strong image of what a father should look like.  It talks so much about fatherhood in that Abraham is in the Bible, and he had kids.  

Rebecca: Yeah.  That’s full proof logic.  Therefore, we need to perfectly emulate Abraham.  Yeah.  Who did a lot of stuff that God did not approve of.  But anyway, that’s—what really stood out to me about the article was that his main complaint about the dad is that—and we’ll get into this with our conversation with Rick—is that he thinks that a nurturing, loving father, who plays with his kids in a silly way, is acting like a mother.  And that’s an insult.  So on that note, let’s switch over and talk to Rick.  First, I want to let you know.  For anyone who doesn’t know who Rick is, Rick is a journalist with Baptist News Global.  He writes all sorts of fantastic articles.  If you have been reading the block for awhile, you’ve probably seen links to some of Rick’s articles already especially about a lot of the larger issues that we’ve been dealing with in the church for years now.  So you’ve probably already read his articles before, but now we’re thrilled to have him on the podcast.  Hi, Rick.

Rick: Hey, good to be here.

Rebecca: Yes.  Oh, and also Rick is a stay-at-home dad as well.  So Connor and Rick have that in common as well.  

Connor: Yeah.  Yeah.  And that’s going to be pertinent for today’s discussion, I think.

Rick: Yeah.  I actually didn’t know that you were a stay-at-home dad.

Connor: Yeah.

Rebecca: Yeah.  We have a weird situation.  We both work half time and are stay-at-home parents half time.

Rick: Oh, okay.  Cool.

Connor: Yeah.  But also because we work from home also, it’s kind of like even when you’re working you’re still a stay-at-home parent.  You’re on call if anything goes wrong.  You’re there to just manage.  

Rick: Yeah.  Somebody was asking me about my days off.  And I was like, “Oh, I work seven days a week.”  You don’t really—my daughter told me.  She’s like, “Aren’t you glad it’s the weekend?”  And I was like, “Well, with the weekend, that means you kids are home for the next two days.  A weekend for you isn’t exactly a weekend for me.”

Rebecca: Yeah.  This is my second shift, bud.

Connor: Yeah.  I remember just a year ago I was saying to Rebecca that—we’ve fallen into a pretty good rhythm in terms of having time off and managing how our evenings and weekends go so that we all get some time to recharge and refresh even though we’ve got kids at the house.  And I remember saying to her, “What did we use to do on weekends before we had kids?  We just had fully a two-day period every week where we didn’t work.  What did we do?”  

Rick: And how many dishes did we possibly have?

Connor: Yeah.  Yeah.

Rick: Two plates and two forks.  How hard was that to clean?  

Connor: Oh man, I don’t get much of a weekend this time around because we’ve got a whole bunch of housework to do.  Some dishes, some vacuuming.      

Rebecca: Some laundry.  It’s like there’s no one throwing up on you.  How much laundry is there?  Anyway, it is wild when you look back.  So we wanted to talk about parenting today.  So I am sure—if any of you are listening who have kids under the age of probably 10, you have probably watched Bluey.  Bluey is a show that is created out of Australia.  It’s about this little family of heelers.  It has the mom and the dad and the two little girls, Bluey and Bingo.  And it’s a fantastic show.  I’m going to let you know right now what our bias is.  It’s a great show.    

Connor: As parents who are very—we’re very discerning about what we let our kids watch.  Bluey is one of the best shows we’ve encountered (cross talk).

Rebecca: Yeah.  But one of the reasons that Bluey is so popular—and I’m just going to give a little bit of an intro, and then I’m going to let you guys talk more about the actual issues with the weirdness going on with it.  But the reason that this show is so popular is, first of all, it kind of is a one on one course in gentle parenting.  So if you’re someone who has talked—has heard a lot of talk about, oh, we shouldn’t be using punitive measures, what does it look like to be a gentle parent, Bluey is genuinely—watch it with your kids because the parents are not pushovers.  But they also engage in so much fun with their kids.  They’re emotionally present with their children.   They play with their kids.  They get silly with their kids.  It’s such a heartwarming show.  And the best thing is, too, is that the dad is so involved.  The dad is just as much of a comfort parent as the mother is in this show.  He enters into his kids’ world.  He has silly games like Magic Asparagus that he plays with his kids, right?  Where you point the magic asparagus and turn them into an animal.  It’s all these silly little things that you didn’t really see on a lot of shows growing up that the dad felt as much of a parent as the mother did.  So, of course, when you have a show that is wholesome and lovely and shows dads being active parents, what’s going to happen?  The weird side of the Internet is going to get mad.  And I’m wondering, Rick, would you mind giving us a rundown of what the critique was from this person?

Connor: From Jeremy Pryor.  

Rebecca: From Jeremy Pryor.  Yeah.

Rick: Yeah.  There’s been a buildup of this because the Gospel Coalition has been afraid that it might go woke like Peppa.  They’ve been kind of keeping their eye on this thing for a little while.  And then Jeremy Pryor wrote this—he wrote actually a couple pieces.  But the one that got republished, I believe, by The Blaze was the one that I originally responded to.  And he’s basically talking about how Bluey is erasing gender distinctions because it has a girl dog that’s blue.

Rebecca: Yes.  Because we all know that blue heelers are only boys.  That’s how that works.

Rick: Never mind it’s actually in the dog’s name.  But that, and then also the—I think the big thing was the critique of the dad.  And he has this whole list of contrasts in a second article that he wrote where he’s contrasting Bandit, the dog’s dad, with Father Abraham in this ancient, Middle Eastern, patriarchal man.  And so he’s drawing all of these distinctions like Bandit wants to maximize time with his kids when they’re children, but Father Abraham wants to maximize his time with his children when they’re adults and stuff like that.  And so it’s just mapping all of that onto—

Rebecca: That’s just so wild.  First of all, why is this an either or?  

Rick: Yeah.  Yeah.

Rebecca: But also realistically when your kids are adults, you don’t have them in your house 24/7.  Anyway, sorry.  Sorry.  I hadn’t heard that particular one.  That was wild.  

Rick: Yeah.  He’s got a whole list of 11 distinctions between Father Abraham and Bandit.  So yeah.  It was a rather interesting thing. I kind of wanted to share some of my thoughts on it since I was a—I am a stay-at-home dad. 

Rebecca: Yeah.  I know that when I read the original article that you responded to—and by the way, if anyone is curious, we’re going to have Rick’s response to the article on Bluey linked in the podcast description notes.  So make sure you go check it out.  It’s a fantastic article.

Connor: Yeah.  And something I want to say that I really appreciated about your response article, Rick, is I do always appreciate when articles are done in response that do not take the original source out of context and spin things to make—to make the original article into a kind of house of cards that’s easy to knock over.  Instead, you kept a lot of the original context in the piece and weren’t shifting around his points in order to make it easier to make your argument.  Instead, you just presented everything as it was, and I think took very—a very measured response from there which I always appreciate seeing because I think it’s, frankly, just better journalism.

Rebecca: Mm-hmm.  Absolutely.  When I was reading it, the thing that stood out to me that I just thought was so sad—and I imagine you’ll probably have a comment about this when we talk about the implications too, just dads.  Is this person who wrote the original article, Jeremy Pryor, said that he was alerted to this because his daughter told him that she had seen Bluey and knew that her dad would not like it because of how the father was so emotionally open with his children and so silly.  And that made me sad.  Can you imagine if your kid comes to you and is like, “Oh, you’re going to hate this show.  The dad is great”?  That’s how that felt to me, and that was how—and I read his article.  And I was like, “Wait a second.  Are you seriously telling me that your daughter  came to you because a show had a dad who was emotionally entering into his children’s world, and she thought you’d find that a red flag?

Connor: And I think it’s really interesting the way that he presents that in his article, Jeremy Pryor, is he says, “My daughters saw some of the show and immediately picked up on some of the red flags.”  And then what he quotes his daughter actually saying to him is, “Yeah.  The dad spends a lot of time engaging in imaginative play with his kids.”  And not, “Oh yeah.  This was troubling because here is what I saw.”  Just this is what I saw in the show.  And he’s like, “Yeah.  Good thing they’re picking up on red flags.”  

Rick: Yeah.  And it’s so interesting.  Christian theology is so varied especially when it comes to ideas of what it means to be a father and a parent or a man and a woman.  A child.  And one of the things that—we can really make the Bible say a lot of things.  And it’s just sad to me when we pick certain ways of interpreting that clearly cause harm to kids and to one another when it’s so unnecessary.  In Christian theology, there’s this idea of incarnation.  God becomes human.  There’s the nearness of God, the immanence of God.  There’s the presence—Jesus talks about being in and among us.  So you could choose that.  Or you could choose this distant towering over kind of caricature and go with that.  It’s very telling when people choose that distant towering over thing because the nearness of God without the in and among childlike nature of being a healthy father is a towering figure.  It’s a domineering figure.  And I think it’s quite telling when men resonate more with that towering domineering over figure and not the God on the ground with your kids.

Connor: Mm-hmm.  Yeah.  I think one thing that I always like to try to do when I see things like this is I like to try to engage with—or I like to try to argue with the points being made starting from a place of the other person’s priorities, and that’s something that I do appreciate about Jeremy Pryor’s article is that he makes it clear what he is purporting his values or his priorities to be.  And what he wants is he’s saying that he thinks the Bible is saying that a proper marriage, a proper family, is something that’s God created to drive us towards fruitfulness.  A good marriage.  The reason things are the way they are is because that’s what produces a fruitful marriage, a fruitful family.  And the dad’s job is to be—the dad’s job is to expand territory, to train, to have power and dominion over the earth, these things which—as we all know, money, power, and territory expansion are the fruits of the Spirit.

Rebecca: Obviously.  Yes.  Obviously.  Yeah.  That was sarcasm.  Just to be clear.   

Connor: Yeah.  But he says okay.  These are the things that we should want, and this is why Bluey is a bad portrayal of fatherhood because it gets away from those things.  And it gets away from fruitfulness.  And what I think when I look at that list that you included, the follow up that Jeremy Pryor wrote, that you included that list of contrasts, when you look at a lot of the things he’s purporting to value that he thinks Abraham did well and Bandit did poorly, when you look at the outcomes of things—I’m going to give you some examples in a sec.  When you look at the outcomes of those things, you see actually just further reinforcement of why Bandit, I think, is such a good portrayal of a father figure.  He talks about how—the one you mentioned already, Bandit wants to maximize time with his children whereas Abraham wanted to maximize time with his kids as adults.  And the thing is what we’re seeing if you don’t establish relationship with your kids when they are kids you’re not going—you’re not likely to have much of a relationship with them as adults.  If you want to maximize time with your kids as adults, have a relationship, be nurturing, be encouraging, be open, and be present with them.  And if you want to—he says Abraham wanted to train his kids whereas Bandit wanted to play with them.  And just in my life as a parent, what I found is that when I engage with my kids and when I am present with them and I am playing with them and I am empathetic with them and I am gentle with them and I communicate with them on their level that makes them more open to my teaching and my training.  When I am someone who they trust and someone that they feel safe with, they want to know how I feel about the world and how I feel about right and wrong and how I feel about what it is important to learn how to do.  So for me, if I want to train my kids, I want to emulate a father who is a lot more like Bandy.

Rebecca: Yeah.  Exactly.  Well, and what I want to let people know.  This is the title of the article.  Are you ready?  How a Beloved Children’s Cartoon Turns Fathers into Mothers and What the Bible Says About It.  And then he says this, “As the Western world catches collective amnesia around the profile of the historic father, we’ve begun to move past portrayals of fathers as the bumbling idiot of shows of the 1980s and 1990s to a new kind of engaged, empathetic, and present father.  There’s only one problem with this new ideal father.  He embodies almost all the elements of the traditional mother purged of the essence of elements from the historic father.  The poster child for this new depiction can be found in the mega popular kids’ program, Bluey.  The dad, Bandit, is seen as constantly nurturing, always present playmate to his two daughters, Bluey and Bingo.  He’s so present, in fact, that fans of the show often joke about when Bandit finds time to work.  And in the show, it’s clear that the mother has less time to play than the dad.”

Rick: Yeah.  And it’s interesting.  Notice how he creates this picture of the dad as very distant and up there.  And he contrasts that with the mother, who is present.  Now think about this theologically within the context of the Bible even.  The fundamental wound in the Bible is exile.  Israel is fearing exile.  They’re experiencing exile.  They’re processing back on their exile.  Adam and Eve exile from the garden.  Exile is all over the place.  And so much of this guy’s theology and his view of manhood is creating exile.  I’m going to be present with my kids now when they’re adults.  And so that’s a big part of my critique is I want a theology of parenting that allows you to be home in and among your kids because I think that’s where the presence of God and the power of God works.  That’s the whole concept of the table.  You’re around the table.  It’s the presence of God in and among people at a circle table together.  And I think we’re missing that when we try to posture ourselves over one another and we’re more concerned about power over than power in and among.

Rebecca: I think you’re entirely right.  And what that ends up creating is when we’re so obsessed with power—and we’ve talked about this about other issues too on the Bare Marriage podcast.  What happens is because we have historically been in a situation where men have had power over women, right?  The concept of a man giving up the power that culturally he was given to, yeah, be the one who is staying home with the kids, to be nurturing instead of separated, right?  That is a threat, right?  That’s seen as a threat.  It’s like, “If he did that, that means that when I was a workaholic and didn’t spend time with my kids and didn’t play with them and wasn’t nurturing and wasn’t trusted by them, that means that I wasn’t a good dad.”  And so instead of doing the introspection and being like, “Wait a second.  Why am I so threatened by a cartoon dog whose kids think he’s fun?”  We don’t do the introspection.  Instead we project, and we call, “Well, he’s just being a woman.”  And that’s the worse insult that they guys can give, right?  Well, he’s a woman.  That’s the worst insult.  

Connor: And then to get into your story that you share a bit about in the article, Rick, as one thing—again, to get back to that idea of Jeremy Pryor’s argument for this—his interpretation of this biblical view of family and marriage with the male headship and everything is that is the fruitful arrangement.  That is the most fruitful arrangement.  And at least in our marriage, we’ve gone through phases of our life where, honestly, the more fruitful thing is for Rebecca to be the—she’s making more money than me at times in our life.  She definitely at pretty much every point in our marriage has had a larger kingdom impact with her work than me.  Her work is changing people’s minds, changing people’s lives.  My work is making sure our website doesn’t have plug in vulnerabilities.  You talk about your story a bit in your article and just about how you came to some of the decisions you did with how you and your wife decided to arrange family.  And I was wondering if you had anything—any insights you would provide over how you feel your choices have affected the overall fruitfulness of your marriage?

Rick: Yeah.  So for me growing up and for most of my adult life actually, I was a complementarian.  Very conservative complementarian.  Big fan of John Piper.  All those guys.  John MacArthur.  All of them.  And I was leading worship in a mega church in Greenville for—until about—well, in 2015, we went through a worship school.  And they told us on that first night that we needed to have God awareness and self awareness.  And I thought, “Well, my God awareness is perfectly fine.  I have no questions about God.  I’ve got that figured out.”  But I had never thought about myself awareness before.  And so they then basically for the next year began taking us on this journey of self awareness and learning the wonders that we had and the wounds that we had.  And basically, I know people look down on this, but I really began to learn to love myself, to care for myself, to look on myself with compassion.  And then that opened me up to loving my neighbor as myself.  And one of those neighbors is my wife. And I began to realize that—a lot of these gender scripts of conservative complementarianism, it’s about the—the man gets to pursue his passions and his desires.  And it’s labeled the calling of God.  And then the woman is his helper to pursue his passion.  And you notice in his—in Pryor’s article one of the things he talks about the dangers was that the mom has time to pursue her passions.  Oh no. 

Rebecca: Heaven forbid.  That was a real pearl clutching—that was pearls clutching for me when I saw that (inaudible) was off—think of the children.  Anyway, sorry.  I’m being sarcastic.

Rick: Yeah.  Basically, I began questioning everything and got to the point where I want to develop a theology and I want to participate in a theology that is centered on loving your neighbor as yourself.  And part of that means this fruitfulness of figuring out what does it mean for my neighbor to flourish.  And so that doesn’t mean everyone is serving my interests.  That means we’re a family.  I’ve got a wife.  I’ve got five kids.  What does it look like for each person in our family to flourish?  And that’s going to look differently for different individuals within the family, and we’re here to work together to accomplish that.

Rebecca: I think that’s what I’ve been so confused by.  And I mean I’m not really confused.  I understand it intellectually, but it was just so different than how my life was growing up is also this idea that when you get into these gender roles of, well, heaven forbid that the woman has career ambitions.  Or heaven forbid the husband does parenting duties.  It’s just ridiculous.  But there’s no ability to understand that there are seasons of life as well.  We are currently—Connor and I are currently in a season of life where my work has to take priority, right?  That might not always be the case.  It might be that I’m burned out in five years.  Frankly, that’s a very real possibility.  And we switch more to you being able to follow a calling.  I mean my parents kind of took turns as I was growing up.  And I think that’s also something that’s really missing from this conversation is when we just get so focused on whether the person with the right genitals is working we don’t think about what’s best for the family right now, right?  

Connor: When you get into a lot of psychology and counseling and things like that, what you see is that one of the big markers of a healthy mind versus an unhealthy mind is flexibility.  A lot of mental issues and traumas and things like that, a lot of the impact that they have on the mind is they give it areas of inflexibility, areas of rigidity, and you, through a counseling relationship, work to make yourself more flexible, more adaptable so you can handle more situations.  And I think a purely role locked complementarian relationship does not have flexibility to adapt to changing seasons of our life.  So I think the seasons thing is very apt.  When we first got married, that was a season where I was working at Tim Horton’s on weekend and also teaching dance while a full time university student to pay our rent and our grocery bills.  And then we’ve shifted back and forth.  Our work week rearranges every two years or so to accommodate for what are the current needs of our family.

Rebecca: But it also means that if you’re a guy who is raised in conservative Christianity—and maybe this was your experience too, Rick.  I don’t know.  But I’ve seen it so often that if you’re raised with this idea of what masculinity is then you can’t just let the wife do something or help because then it’s like I failed.

Rick: Yeah.  And that’s where a lot of my—so going back to that self awareness piece.  When I began looking at my wounds, a lot of my wounds were shame.  And I started to realize how after—through grieving those wounds, I began to realize how much of those were informed by my theology and by what I was supposed to be as a man and how I was not making a bunch of money.  I’m not the kind of—I struggled with oftentimes—when we would have a disagreement in our marriage, she would be right.  And I knew it.  And my theology said I was to be her shepherd.  So if I’m to be the shepherd but she’s always right and I know it then I must not be having the wisdom of God.  I must not be—all these insufficiencies of who I am.  And that was a big revelation for me.  I know another guy that I focused on a lot this year that you’re—you guys have focused on a lot is Josh Howerton.

Rebecca: Oh yes.  We know Josh.

Rick: Yeah.  So one thing he said in a recent sermon—and I’m not quoting him directly here because I don’t have it in front of me.  But he said something about how God doesn’t value the person but the place.  

Rebecca: That’s a common belief in those circles though.

Rick: And I think that goes to the inflexibility piece of this that you’re talking about.  You are to be in the tower of Babel on this specific floor, and these walls are totally inflexible because it’s a tower.  What I’m saying, and I think you guys are saying too, is we need to begin to see the person.  We need a theology that fuels face to face valuing the person and helping each other flourish as human beings and not just what floor are you on in the tower and do you have the right key card, which is a body appendage, to get into this floor.

Connor: Yeah.  Yeah.      

Rebecca: Exactly.  I think, too, when—if we’re going to get there, one of the things that has to happen is—for goodness’ sakes, can we stop insulting men by calling them women?  I’m just saying.  This whole article from this guy is like they made fathers into mothers.  That’s the worst thing that a man can be.

Connor: And worse, he’s really good at it.  

Rebecca: Exactly.  First of all, it’s not—whether or not you’re nurturing has nothing to do with your genitalia.  It’s a character trait.  Men are nurturing.  Women are nurturing.  Available parents are nurturing.  But also even if someone was acting like a mother, that’s not an insult, guys, okay?  I just do want to say that.

Rick: Yeah.  And that’s where I kind of remind myself not to take a lot of this stuff personally because I’ve purposely put stay-at-home dad in my bio.  And actually on Facebook, I think I put homemaker recently just to try to rile (cross talk) up.

Rebecca: That’s amazing.  I love that.  

Rick: It’s not about me.  This is a revelation of what a lot of these guys view of women.  I’ve gotten criticized.  People tell me go make me a sandwich.  Or you probably just stay in the bathtub all day sipping wine.  Is this what you guys think women do all day?

Rebecca: Women are like, “I wish.  No.”

Rick: This is just revealing what you think about women which is kind of only furthering the point.

Rebecca: Exactly.  I know that it’s been such a blessing in our marriage for there to be so much flexibility on both of our ends.  There have been times where I’ve had to step back so that you can get stuff done.  There’s been times that you have stepped back so I can get stuff done, and that’s going to continue to happen.  And what we really hope as we continue to challenge a lot of these ideas of what it actually means to be a biblical man or biblical woman and, hint, it means just acting like Christ.  That’s it.  It’s that simple.  How can you best act like Christ in this situation?  And it’s not going to mean that you grasp onto power and that you are domineering and cruel or that you are more focused on hoarding or earthly wealth than you are focusing on becoming more and more like the loving and nurturing and caring and trustworthy and loving Christ, who compared Himself to a mother hen gathering up her chicks.  Okay?  This whole argument is bizarre.  And it’s time for it to stop.  And I’m really grateful that it is getting more normal that men are taking more initiative to be the primary one at home as well because this doesn’t need to be tied to sex.  It just doesn’t.  This needs to be a logical decision based on where people have been gifted, where they are called, and what logically just makes sense for the family.  So I just want to say thank you very much, Rick, for coming on and sharing your—sharing what you had to say.  Please check out his article.  It is in the podcast notes.  It’s a great one.

Connor: Very well written.

Rebecca: And you’ll find it inspiring and encouraging because this needs to be the norm more often. 

Connor: Yeah.  And there is a lot in there that we didn’t get an opportunity to touch on today.      

Rebecca: Absolutely.  Mm-hmm.

Rick: Yeah.  And I’ll just add, too, I’m sure people are going to disagree with some of the stuff I say.  And I’m fine with that.  But I just wanted to say that my attempt is not to try to bash God or bash Christianity.  I’m trying to work out in real time where I’m recognizing dynamics of power over.  And then where I’m seeing theology parallel that that might be being reflected in human relationship.  So if you occasionally have some issues with something that I say, that’s fine.  I just wanted to share that.  That’s kind of where my heart is is to look at the fruit that we can see and then see—take it back to the branches and the trunk and the root to see where—what kind of theological dynamics are power over being manifested here, if that makes sense.

Rebecca: Yeah.  That’s fantastic.  I mean that’s all what we’re all about here too.  So you’re in good company there.  Well, thank you again so much for coming on the Bare Marriage podcast, Rick.

Rick: Yeah.  Definitely.

Rebecca: And please, for everyone listening, go and read his article.  One of the questions that we get a lot from podcast listeners and blog readers is how can we support you guys.  And so I wanted to just parachute in and tell you a couple of quick ways that you can support what we do here.  First of all, you can join our Patreon.  Our Patreon is a lot of fun.  There’s a bunch of patrons now at this point.  The Facebook group is so active.  And what we’ve loved about having the Patreon is that it allows us to really connect with those of you who are really engaged in our work who have been affected by it, who have been set free by the research that we’re doing.  And it’s encouraging to us to be able to really get to know you and feel like we’re getting to connect with all those people who are reading and listening.  But I will tell you it’s weird from our vantage point because we make all this content, but we never actually get to interact with the people who engage with it.  And so the group has been great for that.  The Patreon is great for that.  You get to have access to an exclusive Facebook group.  Also if you’re at any of the higher points, you can get access to an exclusive podcast with us.  Additionally, there are merch perks.  And talking of merch perks, if you want to support us, we have merch lines.  And the proceeds from those merch lines help directly pay for the expenses of this podcast.  So the links to the Patreon and the merchandise will be in the podcast description notes.  We’ve got some great lines out there.  I personally love the science ricks stickers.  And one of our best sellers has always been the biblical womanhood line where we talk about how many amazing things women have done throughout the Bible.  And hopefully, I can encourage you today too.  

Connor: Okay.  So I thought that was a really interesting conversation, great conversation, we got to have with Pidcock.  There are a couple of other things that I wanted to—a couple of other points I wanted to make and talk about here just in the discussion with you and me about this article before we sign off.  So one thing I want to do is Pidcock mentioned this list of comparisons that were made directly in Jeremy Pryor’s article between Abraham and Bluey.  And it’s just a point by point thing.  And I want to go through some of these.  And feel free to hop anywhere you see a problem.  And we can comment on these a bit more later.  So first up, Bandit wants to play with his kids.  Abraham wants to train his kids.  So these are the kinds of distinctions that we’re making here.  

Rebecca: Okay.  

Connor: Bandit wants to submit to the vision of his children.  Abraham wants to sweep his kids into a greater family vision.  

Rebecca: Okay.  That is wild.  I mean I need—I can go off for a long time when I see problems with things.  But the idea that Bandit playing with his kids and taking cues from his children means that he wants to submit to his children’s desires is kind of ridiculous.  There’s a lot of times when Bluey does not get what she wants.  

Connor: Yeah.  The complaint here is that he’ll engage in their imaginative play with them.  They’ll decide they’re doing a princess castle, and Bandit is like, “Okay.  Well, let me be part of this.”      

Rebecca: I’ll be the dragon.  Exactly.  

Connor: I’ll be the dragon.  And that’s him submitting to their vision of things.  It’s a false dichotomy. 

Rebecca: It is a false dichotomy.  It absolutely is.

Connor: A lot of these things—it’s being presented as you have to do one or the other, not these two things are separate or can exist in tandem with each other.  Bandit wants to maximize his time with kids when they are children.  Abraham wants to maximize time with his kids when they are adults.  I love this one.  Because you know what we see a lot of, if you don’t develop a relationship with your kids when they are kids, if you don’t have this emotional intimacy with them, if you don’t engage with them, if you’re not a person to them, you’re not going to be spending a lot of time with them as adults.

Rebecca: Yeah.  If you’re not putting the time in when the kids are young, then they’re not going to want—there’s been lots of studies that show that that you’re going to have more time with your kids when they are young no matter what because they live at your house.  And if you want to have time with your kids after they’re out of your house, yeah, you got to use these years when they’re in your house to build that relationship.

Connor: And the counter point could be that, well, that’s the mother’s job to create the relationship with them while they’re kids.  But I know a lot of situations where the kids have a good or okay relationship with their mom and do not talk to their dad.

Rebecca: Well, and not only that, there’s all these studies that find that, in essence, once—in families where there’s a husband and wife who are aging together, when the mom of the family dies, the visits and the communication just kind of stops with dad because they’ve never communicated with dad before.  And so it ends up happening that—and it’s a real problem.  And it’s hard, right?  Because you have these kids, who a lot of them—yeah.  Their mom was their safe person, and there dad really wasn’t.  And then their mom dies.  And what do you do?  It’s complicated and awkward.  So this is just—it’s setting people up for a loneliness epidemic as well.  You don’t want to be in a position where your entire social support structure is built on the fact that your wife did all your emotional work for you your entire life.  That’s quite terrifying actually.

Connor: Yeah.  Our next one here, Bandit’s primary domain of fatherhood is with young children in the home.  Abraham expresses fatherhood by multiplying the resources of family through work.

Rebecca: I love how these guys are just so angry at the idea of dad spending time with their kids.  When I see stuff like this, here’s what I think.  I think that these guys are incredibly self conscious and incredibly—they have a lot of guilt around how they handled the young child years with their family.  We all make mistakes, and we all do things that we regret.  Or sometimes we do things that we don’t regret, but we just had to, right?  Sometimes you might want to be able to pursue a specific degree or do something with your life, and just life circumstances didn’t let it happen.  And that’s okay.  That happens.  But then I think a lot of people get really consumed by guilt.  And instead of saying, “Yeah.  I had to do something that I felt was not ideal, but it was the right thing for my family,” and accepting that, what they do instead is say, “No.  I need to have done everything perfectly.  And so, therefore, I’m going to make the thing that I did the perfect option, so I don’t have to emotionally deal with it,” right?

Connor: Yeah.  The brain doesn’t like to hold onto and exist in these negative states for long extended periods of time.  And so a lot of the time it’s easier for the brain to just internalize, no.  I don’t have to feel guilt over this because this was good and right.  And that is a way to alleviate a lot of that negative emotional burden to a degree.  But it’s not healthful.

Rebecca: No.  And I wonder how many of guys like this one, who is writing this article, were so focused on work when their kids were young.  And there’s nothing wrong with being focused on work.  But I mean to the detriment of your relationship with your children because that is wrong.  I’m fine with saying that.  But if you are a workaholic because you’re like, “Well, it’s the mom’s job to take care of the kids, so I’m just going to work,” and then you—your kids are 17, 18, 19 and you realize that you don’t have a lot of good memories with them when they were 4.  Or you realize that you weren’t emotionally invested with your kids, and you realize that you don’t have a relationship with your kid.  I can see that just sending someone into such a panic and such a grief that they’re just not willing to deal with.  That’s what I think of when I hear this kind of stuff is what I think of is, oh, this is a guy who woke up one day and realized that he missed out on 10 years of his children’s childhood.  And he will never get those years back, and now he’s making it rationalized in his head through making sure that other people make the same mistakes he did so he can feel better about the mistakes that he made.  Instead of just being emotionally mature and realizing, oh, you know what?  I made this decision.  This is the reason why I made this decision.  This is what I would do differently now, and here’s what I suggest people do instead and using yourself as an example of what not to do.  Instead it’s an ego protection, and it’s, in essence, just trying to make sure everyone does the same thing you do so you can feel better about what you did.  I mean we see that a lot, right?

Connor: Yeah.  Our next one here is Bandit wants to experience being his kids’ play toy.  Abraham wants his kid to respect him, honor him, and obey his voice.  With this one right here right away, that’s just an accurate reading of how Bluey, the show, goes down.  Bandit will play with them and be a fun and safe person for them to be with, but there are times where he does when things go too far or he puts down his food and is like, “No.  No.  No.  That’s enough.”  And he does demand a healthy amount of respect and responsiveness from his kids.  It’s all fun and games until it isn’t, and then Bandit does a really good job of parenting through that.

Rebecca: Yeah.  And I think that, again like you said, there’s always this false dichotomy.  And I think they have to have this false dichotomy, and we see this in so many different areas, right?  Where, well, husbands need sex, and women need emotions.  It’s like okay.  No.  You both need both, but they can’t understand that both need both because that would mean, again, you have to take down those ego defenses, right?  I look at this article, and I see Emerson Eggerichs in Love and Respect so similarly where you have to believe this because there’s too much childhood trauma wrapped up in it.  There’s too much implications for your marriage wrapped up into it.  In essence, you’re too far into the pit.  You have to keep digging, right?  And that’s just a sad place to be.  Because if you’re staking your whole mission, your whole ministry on making sure that other people’s relationships with their kids are just as weird and distant emotionally as yours is—because that’s—again, I know I said this with Rick.  But the thing that just really made me sad is the fact that this guy’s daughter came to him and said, “Oh, you’d hate this show.  The dad plays with the kids.”  That’s so sad, and I know I’ve already said that. But that is so sad.  And similarly, you look at a lot of this marriage advice that’s out there that we talk about all the time, and it’s just so set up with this false dichotomy, this false binary, because I think that these people are just already so broken and have made so many—in essence have mired themselves in this gender binary that to question it would mean questioning your whole relationship.  The way you’ve treated your wife for 25 years, the way you raised your kids, who are now older and you can’t go back.  The cost of renegotiating beliefs is so high for these people that they’d rather doom others to the same fate than do the work to make the cycle stop with them.

Connor: Yeah.  And here’s the thing is I get it.  I understand.  Imagine raising your kids through their whole childhood lives, getting to the end of that, and being confronted with maybe you were doing it wrong.  And, again like we said, those aren’t years you can get back.  And so you have to choose to either really grapple with that and figure out what you can do from here knowing that the last 20 years you did wrong, and there’s kind of no undoing that.  Or you can just figure out a way to make it right in your head.  That’s really tough.  And I get it.  I totally understand that.

Rebecca: What I think is so encouraging though is—and I do want to just shout out.  That is what a lot of people, who listen to this podcast, have done.  That is what a lot of our patrons have done.  We hear that from people all the time where it’s like, “Hey, my kids are 21, 23, and 25.  And we totally raised them in all this stuff.  We did the James Dobson way.  We did all this stuff.  How do I talk to my kids about this?  How do I tell them that I’ve changed my mind?  How do I help them understand?”  And I do want to say that’s really hard to do.  And so if you’re one of those parents who did that, thank you so much because I don’t want to downplay how difficult that is.  That is so hard.  But it is possible.  People are doing it every day.

Connor: So there are a few more on here.  And because we’ve talked about a lot of these points indirectly, I want to rattle through them, and then I want to make just some of my final points on all of this to tie everything in.  So our last couple of points here are Bandit wants to maximize present fun.  Abraham wants to maximize future impact.  Bandit represents the peak of fatherhood with young children in the home.  Abraham sees peak fatherhood as being a grandfather or a great-grandfather surrounded by generations of his children.  Bandit sees the fatherly ideal as meeting the emotional desires of a small number of kids.  Abraham sees fatherhood ideally as leading an ever-growing dynamic team.  So one of the big things I want to get into here is this use of Abraham in the comparisons with Bandit.  The idea of Abraham being this biblical blueprint for fatherhood.  And one of the big things that I want to take from this is that so often when we deal with these sorts of things, when we deal with these false teachings about marriage and about sex and about parenthood and everything like that, over and over and over again when I think how can people believe that this is what Jesus wants, I realize, oh, Jesus isn’t here.

Rebecca: Yeah.  They don’t actually think about what Jesus wants.

Connor: You know what he does say about Jesus is that—Jeremy Pryor does say about Jesus that he doesn’t think Jesus would be suited for any kind of leadership position or anything like that because you need—well, I go to the quotes that I’m not—so that I’m not putting words in his mouth.  And it’s right here in this article.  So when directly asked if Jeremy Pryor thinks Jesus would be suitable for positions of leadership in the church or political leadership, Jeremy Pryor says, “I would answer yes.  Paul and Jesus are not appropriate candidates for those two positions because they’re not”—

Rebecca: That’s wild.  So you’re a Christian—

Connor: “- because they’re not fathers, they don’t embody the fatherly masculine values that are so important.”

Rebecca: Oh, Jesus isn’t masculine enough.

Connor: He’s not masculine enough according to Jeremy Pryor.  What he does think is important is he thinks that it is, again, that territory expansion.  That is the man’s position, the man’s job.  And, again, Jesus is not in this.  I may be a bit of a radical Christian in this myself.  But when I’m looking for a blueprint of how to be in whatever role I’m filling, Jesus is that blueprint because—

Rebecca: Call us radical.  Yes.

Connor: Yeah.  Because you know what none of the other figures in the Bible are?  

Rebecca: Our role model.  

Connor: The literal Son of God.  

Rebecca: Well, and also we are told to emulate Jesus.  We are Christians, not Abrahamians.  

Connor: He is the way.  He is the path, the truth, the light.  Christianity that doesn’t revere Christ is actually more either Judaism or Islam. 

Rebecca: Well, it isn’t—it’s nothing.  That’s the thing.  It’s not Christianity at all because, again, Christianity.  Jesus came to show us the perfect way, to say, “No.  Jesus just isn’t tough enough for me.  Jesus didn’t produce enough work rhymes for me, and so I’m going to go with the other guy.”

Connor: Yeah.  It’s saying sure.  Jesus may be a way that’s presented in the Bible, but He’s not masculine enough to be the way for us men.  Also He’s a man though, so He can’t really be the way for women.  And He’s not a child, so He can’t be the way for—we’re stripping Jesus of what He—He is the Son of God.  And we are trying to strip Him of that when we say this.  But then to get right into this idea of territory expansion and everything like that, I think the way that he’s talking about it where it’s about multiplying resources and material gain, power, things like that, the issue is with the society that we live in, that kind of territory expansion that he’s talking about there requires—it’s a zero sum game.  It requires expanding into the territory of other people.

Rebecca: It also means it requires wealth hoarding.  He is talking about things that are antithetical to what it means to be a Christian.  There is nothing wrong with trying to get a raise at work.  Nothing wrong with that.  But there is something wrong about saying, “No, actually.  My job is not to be an involved parent or to be emotionally available.  My job is to make sure that I have as much money as humanly possible.  I get the biggest house.  I get all the fancy things,” because he’s talking about expanding territory.  He’s not talking about provide for your family and then taking the rest of what you have to give to the poor.  He’s not talking about throwing yourself into work so that you have more resources to spread around to those who are less fortunate.  He’s talking about literally territory expanding.

Connor: And that kind of territory expansion is absolutely not in the spirit of Christ.  But you know what I’ve experience as a dad who is emotionally engaged with his kids is I’ve experience a different kind of territory expansion where other parents see me as a safe dad.  There are parents who consider me to be one of, if not the only dad, that they feel safe leaving their kids with if they have to go somewhere for some kind of work thing or medical emergency.  Oh, we need someone to look after the kids.  We can leave them with Connor because he is a safe person and a good dad.  And other people’s kids feel safe with me.  And as our kids grow up, that means that our home is going to be a safe place for my kids and their friends which means that I have people who are going to be looking to the model that I present of fatherhood but also of— 

Rebecca: Jesus.

Connor: – Jesus.  And how I love my wife and how I love my kids and I can expand that.  I feel I have more influence.  I can broaden my impact on the people around me by being like that.  And that’s what we see with Bandit in the show Bluey is there are a lot of other dads who are portrayed in the show.  And they are often portrayed a little bit more typically dad like.  And so often they start to take cues from Bandit on okay.  Yeah.

Rebecca: Maybe I can loosen up a little and have fun with my kid.  

Connor: Maybe I can loosen up a little bit.  Or maybe I am too loose, and I’m leaving all this emotional labor to my wife.  And my kids are running wild.  But Bandit seems to be able to play with his kids and have them—

Rebecca: Still go to bed.

Connor: – respect him and go to bed and do the things that they need to do.  And that, I think, is a far more Christ like version of expanding territory is being someone who can just be a light on the hill that other people can see.  

Rebecca: I think back to the verses that Jesus says, “This is how they will know that you are My disciples by how you love one another.”  It’s not by how you get all the raises and have a boat and a cottage on the lake district.  Or it’s not this is how they’ll know you’re My disciples because you have the most kids and the most number of grandparents like there’s some weird fertility battle.

Connor: That you own more goats on a bigger hill than anyone else.

Rebecca: Exactly.  No.  They will know that you’re My disciples by how you love one another.  And I think that one of the wonderful things about this generation of parenting is that there is this emphasis on dads being present with their kids, on dads actually knowing what their kids like and don’t like at meal times, being able to call the dentist and know when the last appointment was, those kinds of things are so much more common with this generation.  And I think we’re going to see more and more that people from previous generations or people who are currently not doing that are going to be pushing back by trying to make it sound spiritual to not be like that.  And I just want to encourage you that you’re allowed to see that for what it is which is I really do believe that it is just cognitive—it’s rationalization because it’s protecting ego because it’s too painful to examine whether or not things should have been different.  And so why examine it when you could just kind of shove it onto other people, right?  So let’s just stop doing that, guys.  Like we always say.  Healthy, evidence based, biblical.  This stuff from this guy about how we need to be Abraham instead of Jesus is no healthy, not evidence based, nor is it biblical.  So bye-bye.  That’s all.  Thank you so much for listening this week.  

Connor: Yes.  Thank you.

Rebecca: We’re so glad that you joined us.  I hope that you enjoyed this very deep dive into Bluey.  If you haven’t watched Bluey, even if you don’t have kids, just watch an episode on Disney+.  It’s so lovely.  It’s just a sweet little show.  And if any of you need help explaining mental load in your marriage, there is an episode called Pool Time or Pool Day or Beach Day, something like that.  What’s it called?  Anyway, there’s an episode.  I think it’s called—Pool Trip or something like that.  If you just Google Bluey pool episode, it’s free online—on YouTube I’m pretty sure.  And it’s on Disney+, and it’s a great way to explain mental load.  That’s all we have for you today.  Thank you, again, for listening.  You’ll see us here next week at the Bare Marriage podcast, and I hope that you have a wonderful weekend.

Connor: Yes.  And you can see the links for everything that we’ve mentioned in the podcast down in the description below.  

Rebecca: Thank you again, Connor, for coming on the podcast.

Connor: Thank you for having me.

Rebecca: And you will see Sheila on like normal again next week.  Bye-bye.

Connor: Bye.