Nancy (04:04.685)
Well the reason I wrote the book is because I saw articles with titles like Why Can’t We Hate Men? That was actually an article in the Washington Post. And in the in the in the an Australian newspaper had a picture of a young six-year-old boy and it said, How do we prevent this boy from growing up to be a monster? You know, we need to stop this plague of
Dru Johnson (04:15.022)
Mm.
Dru Johnson (04:31.503)
Mm.
Nancy (04:33.417)
of toxic masculinity. And Huffington Post had an editor who tweeted, hashtag kill all men, and then said it was a joke. And speaking of jokes, she can buy t-shirts that say so many men, so little ammunition. And there were actually books with titles of very blunt, like I hate men and no good men, and are men necessary. So this is why I decided to write the book, because it had become so socially acceptable.
To express what I thought was radically hostile views of men. And I thought, where is this coming from? And you know what really sort of I found heartbreaking was that even men are writing sometimes contr you know, denigrating their own sex. There was a book author who wrote who wrote, talking about healthy masculinity is like talking about healthy cancer. And then that and then there was in the news
Dru Johnson (05:26.702)
Hm.
Nancy (05:30.284)
It was actually maybe only a year ago now, the director of the movie Avatar was quoted yeah, he was quoted in the in the newspaper saying, testosterone is a toxin that you have to work out of your system. So this is why I wanted to write this book is because that kind of hostility, you you you can’t really understand a social trend unless you say, Where did it come from?
Dru Johnson (05:35.815)
yeah, James Cameron.
Nancy (05:54.38)
How did it develop? And so that that was my goal, is to sort of say where in the world did this hostility come from? Because many people, they well, they think maybe nineteen sixties second wave feminism, which is what I thought too when I started, that it has a much deeper history and as Christians we can respond better if we know where it came from.
Dru Johnson (06:14.797)
Yeah, okay. I was gonna go there next is because I remember re reading about your biography that you were a feminist at one point, a proud feminist. hopefully you still think there’s something redeemable about some forms of of feminism. So what did you think back in the day when you were a second wave feminist? And what do you think is good, bad or unhelpful about that now?
Nancy (06:17.067)
Okay.
Nancy (06:38.507)
Well, I have to tell you, I’m sure that one reason I became a feminist is because and I do tell this story in my book. I I did grow up in a very abusive home. My father was very physically abusive, and I just had to put that at the front of the book to say, you know, I’m not writing this from a perspective of someone who grew up in a loving, warm, secure home. You know, I was grew up in a home where I had to really work through concepts of masculinity in a very difficult way. Books on abuse will sometimes say
Dru Johnson (06:51.78)
Mm.
Nancy (07:07.999)
was it open hand or close fist? And it was close fist, you know. he was punching he was well, I’ll tell you, he wouldn’t say do this or I’ll spank you, he’d do this or I’ll beat you. He’s quite open about it. So a big part of you know, my coming of age is I went ricocheted into extreme feminism, which kind of makes sense. And then well then I became a Christian and had to sort of rethink it. It took it took several years.
Dru Johnson (07:10.103)
Hmm. Hmm.
Dru Johnson (07:19.172)
Mm.
Nancy (07:38.054)
And you know, the I can remember the exact turning point. I was reading a book called it’s by Nancy Friday. She was sort of a second-tier feminist, you know, not quite Betty Friedan level, but his name was Nancy Friday. The book was My Mother Myself. And in her book, if you had problem A, it was your mother’s fault. And if you had the opposite problem, it was your mother’s fault. But halfway through, halfway and not the patriarchy, the mother.
Dru Johnson (07:48.11)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (08:06.883)
Right, right.
Nancy (08:07.789)
about halfway through I thought, I’m tired of being a victim. That was that was my exact thought. I closed the book and that was the day I stopped calling myself a feminist. So it was for me a lot of it had to do with, you know, the sense that instead of fixing your problems, you keep trying to find who you should blame, you know, who f who has wronged you and and I was not I was ready to move forward.
Dru Johnson (08:30.479)
Mm.
Nancy (08:37.197)
Yeah, I I’d done a lot of z social, psychological, emotional, spiritual healing from my dad’s abuse by that time. And I wanted to move forward with solutions, not with blame, you know, not with just reanalyzing the past endlessly. so feminism, many people will say, well, the early feminists were good. some of them were, but what I what surprised me in researching for this book on masculinity.
was some of the very, very hostile language that we see today. You see in the nineteenth century. Almost almost identical language. You know, that men that men are the source of war and the you know, they’re warmongers and they’re power hungry and they’re greedy and acquisitive and they’re out to win and the the whole history of the history of the universe with its endless war and bloodshed. That’s all men. One woman wrote men
Dru Johnson (09:12.141)
Hmm.
Nancy (09:35.829)
Men the warriors, women the mourners, you know who mourn their losses. So i the language that we see today actually started in the nineteenth century. And so that was a big surprise. The the ex extreme hostility toward men actually started back then.
Dru Johnson (09:45.614)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (09:52.968)
yeah, and and I you know, there’s part of me that wants to put a like a cultural causation network here together and say, yeah, of course with evolutionism, you know, the idea that it’s Lord Tennyson’s nature read in tooth and claw, men are the killers, and then you you have even feminist views of evolution that basically say, Well, why
Why is evolution so violent? Well, because men wrote evolutionary theory. What if everybody was cooperative back then, right? What if everybody had enough food and shared? so it’s not surprising. Have you ever seen the book on killing by any chance? This is a stretch. It’s yeah, it’s it’s it’s actually about men killing in combat. but anyways, it’s a fascinating statistically driven book that basically shows that men
Nancy (10:29.857)
That’s the title? No.
Dru Johnson (10:42.251)
American men specifically, because that’s it’s it’s looking through the American military, do just about everything in their power not to have to injure or kill somebody else, even when it’s to their own advantage, to kill the enemy. and that really only about five percent of men will kind of psychopathically, and they don’t mean it in a negative sense, they just mean you have the the capability to shut off the emotion, kill other men as utility, you know, in in battle, and then move on with your life. But most men cannot do that.
So I think even some of the premises of men as being these violent killers doesn’t have the the data to back it up, I don’t think necessarily.
Nancy (11:22.893)
Well I have read some things, maybe it was from that book on the Civil War. Most of the is Okay. Yes, that most men never actually fired their w rifles yes, but however, I would say that Darwinism has provided some of the negative scripts for masculinity. Let me give you w let me see if I can find one in my notes here.
Dru Johnson (11:26.455)
Yeah, yeah. It starts out with Gettysburg, yeah.
Dru Johnson (11:32.599)
Yep. Yep.
Dru Johnson (11:45.288)
Mm.
Nancy (11:50.476)
This started immediately with Herbert Spencer. You know, he was the main popularizer of Darwin in the in the US. And, you know, we think of evolution as primarily a biological theory. But right from the beginning, people like Spencer were writing that the men who won out on top in the struggle for survival were men who were aggressive, violent, sexually predatory, barbarous, and so on.
Dru Johnson (12:09.497)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy (12:19.559)
Let me s let me give you an exact quote. yeah. Men who were ruthless, brutal, savage, barbarian, and predatory. So in an earlier age, Christians had urged men to live up to the image of God. But the social Darwinists urge men to connect with their animal nature, which they said was their their true nature, the beast within. And today social Darwinism has a new name. It’s called evolutionary psychology, but it still says the same thing.
Dru Johnson (12:33.092)
Hm.
Nancy (12:48.833)
So there’s a best-selling book called The Moral Animal by Robert Wright. And listen to this. Direct quote: Human males are by nature oppressive, possessive, flesh-obsessed pigs. Giving the advice on sex on successful marriage is like offering Vikings a free booklet titled How Not to Pillage. And so
Well, and and one more quote, this was an older book that was just recently reissued. It was Men in Marriage. I read it in the 1970s when it was called Sexual Suicide. But it’s been reissued. That was a better title. Anyway. The author says: men are by nature violent, sexually predatory, and irresponsible. Their deepest yearning is not for wife and family, but for the motorbike and the open road.
The male group escape to a primal mode of predatory and immediate gratification. So this is a script that’s being extrapolated from evolutionary theory. And if you are wondering where the Andrew Tate phenomenon came from, you know, intellectuals have been building that script. Tate’s just popularizing it. So one of the things that we need to understand, you know, as Christians is first of all, you know, it’s a biblical view, but we have to understand the secular script too, because our young men are.
Dru Johnson (13:57.133)
Right.
Nancy (14:14.015)
absorbing that if they’re not getting a healthy message you know through the church. They’re absorbing Andrew Tate. Actually let me give you an an anecdote on that. So I had a graduate student who now teaches at a Christian high school. And she w emailed me and said all of my male students are fans of Andrew Tate. Even using Andrew Tate quotes in the yearbook. And I said, Where do you teach? At a classical Christian school. So I
Dru Johnson (14:31.673)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (14:35.832)
Mm.
Dru Johnson (14:39.437)
Yep.
Nancy (14:43.225)
I I was a little surprised by that, but it does show that this is why we have to understand also the secular script. You know, I mean I teach apologetics, so I like critiquing secular ideas, but it’s also crucial now in order to give young young men a a critical grid.
Dru Johnson (15:00.067)
Yeah, that well, and that’s a it’s a great segue to one of my concerns that I know you share is that script becomes a lens that then a lot of Christians are reading straight into the Bible and then teaching people this is what it means to be a manly man, right? And I’m and you’re pointing you’re flagging this up all over the place. But Andrew Tate is just a mere symptom of a kind of a larger problem. Andrew Tate came along after Christian men were doing this for a while.
So, you know, the men are killers, violent, flesh, flesh pigs, whatever the that which I thought was a real insult to pigs. But the you know, what’s the defense here? Well, A, you can just say, like, yes, that’s true. That’s what you can acquiesce. But it’s that those kinds of notions also pigeonhole, like, what can you say in defense of that? Just say, well, I’m not. I mean, my daughters, I have three daughters, and I’ve noticed
No matter how much love and care and affection we have in the house, they pick up these scripts and and there’s kind of like a well yeah, not you dad, but but all other men in the world, right? And I’m like, Well, that doesn’t really work if you just say yeah, but not you dad, right? so I wonder yeah, go ahead, sorry.
Nancy (16:09.645)
Nancy (16:16.397)
Well you know hi I I I I I would answer t there’s two ways to answer. Let me start with the secular answer. There’s a you know, a Christian one and a secular one. The secular one is I’ll give you two studies. One was done by an anthropologist and he did the first ever study, global study of cross-cultural concepts of masculinity. So not history, but concepts of you know what is what does it mean to be a man. And he found that in spite of cultural differences.
Dru Johnson (16:22.691)
Okay.
Dru Johnson (16:38.319)
Hmm.
Nancy (16:45.377)
There was a core of what all cultures hold. It was a universal co core. And he he summarized it as the three Ps that a good man is one who will provide, protect, and procreate, meaning become a father, build into the next generation. And i I I thought this was immensely encouraging because this is not Christ you know, nations with a Christian background. This was universal. And so there is an innate
universal and inherent built-in knowledge of what it means to be a good man. And I would say, well, men are made in God’s image. And so even in cultures where there’s no Christian background, they do have a very high understanding of what it means to be a good man. And so it gives us a better way to approach these issues, right? Because most men don’t respond very well to being called toxic. Nobody would.
So what we can do is see is there a way to tap into and support and encourage this innate knowledge that they do have of, you know, that God gave them their unique masculine strength, you know, not just to get whatever they want, but to love, protect, provide for those that they care for. So I found that very, very encouraging. David Gilmore is his name, if you want to look up his book. and but then there’s a second study, it’s this one by a sociologist.
Dru Johnson (18:02.905)
Hmm.
Nancy (18:11.027)
And and what he found, he also is is famous enough that he speaks around the world, and he found that men are kind of tracked between two opposing scripts. on the one hand, he he he he came at it with a clever set of questions. He would ask young men two questions. first, what does it mean to be a good man? Right? You’re at a funeral and in the eulogy somebody says he was the good man. What does that mean? And all around the world.
Dru Johnson (18:37.273)
Hm.
Nancy (18:40.353)
The sociologist says young men had no trouble answering it. They would immediately start listing things like honor, duty, respect, competence, responsibility, look out for the little guy. I kind of like that one. be responsible, be a provider, be a protector, be generous. And he would ask the young men, Would you where’d you learn that? And they would say, I don’t know. It’s just in the air we breathe. So once again, I think it’s an innate knowledge.
Dru Johnson (18:53.582)
Hm.
Dru Johnson (19:07.172)
Hmm.
Nancy (19:10.349)
you know, men are made in God’s image. But then he said, he would ask he would ask these young men a follow-up question. He would say, what does it mean if I tell you man up, be a real man? Actually, he said, man the F up to really give it a punch. And the young men would say, No, no, no, that’s completely different. You know, the real man is be tough, never show weakness, win at all costs, you know, play through pain. get
Dru Johnson (19:21.013)
yeah.
Dru Johnson (19:24.483)
Mm.
Nancy (19:39.53)
get rich, get laid, to use their language. And so the sociologists concluded that men are kind of trapped bef between that innate knowledge of what it means to be the good man and the cultural pressure to be what they themselves call the real man. A and those aren’t all bad, of course, ’cause we want people to hang tough in a crisis. But if it gets disconnected from a moral vision, then it can slide into misogyny and dominance and entitlement. And
Dru Johnson (19:42.275)
Mm.
Nancy (20:08.799)
The whole negative script, the Andrew Tate script. so I thought that was important too, because as Christians we need to rec recognize that, yes, on the one hand, it’s very important this is this was a additional data that men do have an innate sense of being made in God’s image. And and we should be encouraging and supporting, you know, th the good man part. And we also need to help men make sense of this this negative script, which they also feel under
under pressure to live up to and help again, it’s the c critical grid. You know, can we have help them have a critical grid on the secular view of masculinity?
Dru Johnson (20:47.181)
Hm. A and so the Christian answer then is what?
Nancy (20:53.133)
Well, yeah, I’m glad you asked me that. Because you know what? That too is based on data. This was so interesting. one of the things I ran across, I didn’t know it was there, I ran across when I was researching the book, is that there’s there is a body of studies that have been done on Christian men. And I think it’s partly because they were targeted. Many people consider the theologically conservative evangelical men as exhibit A of toxic masculinity.
Dru Johnson (21:20.973)
Mm-hmm. Right.
Nancy (21:23.667)
I I have a whole page of quotes. I’ll give you just one. the the f the co-founder of the Church Two movement, which followed the Me Too movement, said the theology of male headship feeds the rape culture that we see permeating American Christianity today. So the social scientists were listening listening to this and saying, Well, that’s an empirical claim.
believing in male headship turns you into an overbearing, oppressive, tyrannical patriarch is itself an empirical claim. So does it? Does it in fact turn you into this kind of a person? And they I I study I have about a dozen studies in my book. And to my great surprise, I mean, because of my my own father being being abusive, I was really surprised. I did not expect it at all. That Christian evangelical man test out as
the most loving and engaged husbands and fathers. Let me in fact let me give you some s the stats on that. first of all, Christian Christian men, let me pull it out here. Christian men are more loving to their wives. And by the way, yes, they do interbo interview the wives separately. so the actually it’s actually the women are reporting the highest level of happiness with
The way the husbands treat them. evangelical fathers are more engaged with their children, 3.5 hours more per week than secular men. Their evangelical couples have the lowest rate of divorce, 35% lower than secular couples. And then, contrary to the narrative, they have the lowest rates of domestic abuse and violence of any major group in America.
And let me give you a quote. Sometimes a quote can crystallize the points. So the person who did the largest study was a sociologist named Brad Wilcox at the University of Virginia. and he’s he’s considered like one of the top marriage researchers in the country. He gets he writes in places like the New York Times. So this is from a New York Times article. He says, It turns out that the happiest of all wives in America are religious conservatives.
Dru Johnson (23:35.854)
Right.
Nancy (23:46.53)
Fully 73% of women who hold conservative gender values and attend church regularly with their husbands have high quality marriages. And then he turns to his secular colleagues. You know, so sociology is one of the most secular disciplines. And I I love this quote. He says, academics need to cast aside their prejudices against religious conservatives and evangelicals in particular.
Conservative Protestant married men with children are consistently the most active and expressive fathers and the most emotionally engaged husbands. So this is not a pep talk from a religious leader, right? This is solid empirical research. And so we should be very confident bringing it into the churches first, and then into the public realm. And I mentioned churches because if you look at my footnotes, you’ll see it’s all academic journal articles.
Dru Johnson (24:23.396)
Hmm.
Nancy (24:44.429)
This material has not made its way into the churches yet. And so I I mean Christian men feel the the you know, the attacks of mas coxic masculinity as much as anyone else. And so I think it could be very encouraging for them to see these this data and see that actually, compared to the average American family man, Christian men are doing very well.
Dru Johnson (25:09.101)
Yeah, and I I think in light of the f I think in general malaise of I can’t do anything right if I’m a man in this especially a white man in this world. but a man in this world it’s like it really is kind of a like a downer vibe, as the kids would say. down with the man and in in the new way.
Nancy (25:26.625)
Well, let me let me give you an an anecdote on that too. So I had an a graduate student who was the head of the women’s ministry at a mega church here in Houston. And sh sh she said, On Mother’s Day we handed out roses and told the women they were wonderful. On Father’s Day we scolded the men and tell them to do better. And I th when I when I give that example, you know, to audiences when I speak at conferences and so on, they all say, Yes.
Dru Johnson (25:45.903)
Mm.
Nancy (25:55.244)
Yes, that’s exactly how the church is treating men. So so I was very careful in my book not to have any scolding tone, you know, all encouragement. there there’s actually a book. Have you have you seen this book? It’s called Why Men Hate Going to Church. Yeah, yes. And he says the average American congregation is sixty percent women, forty percent men. And I would say this is one reason why.
Dru Johnson (26:02.297)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (26:09.945)
Yeah. David Morrow or something I yeah. Yeah.
Nancy (26:23.603)
At chur even at church they get that that sense of scolding and and that they need to do better.
Dru Johnson (26:31.383)
Yeah. Which we all need to do better. That’s a that’s a universal message. I love the way you process information. I mean, I love hearing how you’re thinking about it, which not everybody I talk to tells me how they’re thinking as they’re thinking about it. So I love that you say that’s an empirical claim. You can like we can test that, right? and I think that that’s actually a very biblical approach to the world. I think God designed us to think that way. But
There’s also a historical path that you took in the book as well. How have men viewed the masculine or sorry, women viewed the masculinity of their husbands? What was masculinity? What was the ideal of masculinity in previous generations? And so I thought a lot of what you said about the kind of industrial revolution, I think for a lot of people, that’s probably radical information. So I’m setting you up to basically say, tell us more about that.
Nancy (27:24.683)
You know, that was like I said earlier, it it was a surprise to me. I learned a lot writing this book because I did think it’s the the negative views of men probably started nineteen sixties, second wave feminism. As I dug into it, it actually started after the industrial revolution. Why is that? Well, because before the industrial revolution, most men worked alongside their family all day, their wives and children on the family farm, the family industry, the family business.
And so of course, the social expectation on men was much more or oriented towards caretaking. You know, you had to be gentle and kind and teaching your children. the the caretaking role was was the dominant cultural expectation. In fact, it’s fun to watch even secular historians. one of them puts it this way: the the colonial definition of masculine virtue was duty to God and man.
very duty-oriented, duty and service. so how did we lose that very positive definition of masculine virtue? Well, the Industrial Revolution took men out of the home. Well, first it took work out of the home. And of course, men had to follow their work out of the home into factories and offices. And for the first time in in American history, men were not working with their family members, people they loved, people they had a moral bond with. They were working
In competition with other men, you know, as individuals. And that’s a very different work environment. And already in the 19th century, people began to comment that men were changing. You know, their character was changing because they were being socialized into a very competitive, male-oriented environment. And you see already in the 19th century, people complaining that men were losing their caretaking ethos, that they were becoming competitive, aggressive, greedy.
acquisitive using some of the 19th century language. And what what surprised me is how many of them said men are turning their work into an idol. You know, that instead of getting their main sense of identity and fulfillment in f family and faith, the church, they were starting to get the fulfillment from their work, from career success and accomplishment.
Dru Johnson (29:22.671)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (29:28.59)
Hmm.
Nancy (29:42.19)
So so that was new because before that, you know, fa your work was so integrated into the family. It was clearly part of taking of care of the family as opposed to individual achievement. so yeah, a lot of a lot of people saying for the first time men are turning work into an idol. And that’s that’s when we see the for the first time negative language applied to the male character in the literature of the day, and especially to fathers, because
You know, we’re so used to fathers being out of the home all day that we don’t think of w what a big change it was when it first happened. When for the first time men were not literally, you know, interacting throughout the day with their children. y you see, you know, th they’re they’re not as aware of their children’s needs, they’re not as aware of what their children are thinking. And in the literature already you start to see well, first of all, it was traumatic. First of all you see people just saying, you know, the father’s gone from the home.
Dru Johnson (30:36.013)
Mm.
Nancy (30:40.317)
the the one there was one quote I have or a book at the time, 1881, said, you know, the father who’s the mainstay, the central figure of the home, is gone from Sunday to Sunday. Or the the most influential woman of the 19th century was Frances Willard. She was the founder of the Women’s Christian Temperance Union. And she said, here’s how she put it: God is our father, and yet the prototype of the divine.
Dru Johnson (30:52.911)
Hm.
Dru Johnson (31:02.627)
Hm.
Nancy (31:10.389)
Is out of the house, you know, from weekend to weekend. And so you start and then of course the negative critiques. Then it started being, well, men started being treated as irrelevant, superfluous, incompetent. and it sets us up for what we see today, right? In the media today, fathers are consistently mocked and ridiculed, made fun of, even in the cartoons and in ads.
In Married with Children, in American Dad, what my my s my son.
Dru Johnson (31:43.981)
I I don’t know what the current ones are, but it’s probably still going on, I’m sure, in whatever’s being produced.
Nancy (31:48.062)
it is. It is. It is. I recently had to do an article on fathers and I found I found places like the New York Times carrying articles like, Who needs fathers? Why do we need fathers anymore? They b I you s I’m sorry, but from an evolutionary perspective, they are superfluous. That kind of arti writing is appearing recently in the New York Times. But but my s one of my sons loved the Bernstein Bear books. Did you ever read that? And especially the it’s a whole series, especially toward the beginning, the father is always the butt of the joke.
Dru Johnson (32:10.365)
yeah, of course, yeah.
Nancy (32:17.517)
You know, he’s always the bubbling idiot idiot, even the kids are smarter than he is. Anyway, so you know, where did that start? It started in the nineteenth century when fathers were out of the home for the first time and not as connected to their kids. So the the negative critiques have been there since the nineteenth century. And of course that does also kind of suggest the solution. The solution is can we find ways to reconnect fathers to their children, especially their sons?
Dru Johnson (32:45.689)
Yeah, and I want to get to that radical solution, or maybe we can just make it more amiable. of course, coming from the biblical literature, I’m a old testament scholar, that’s what I do for a living. it and and I’ve written quite a bit about the daily life of Israelites. Everything we read in the Bible presumes a man in the home working on a farm. I mean, it’s it’s ma and pa ingalls, right?
Nancy (33:13.42)
is
Dru Johnson (33:14.041)
That they’re working as a team with other people. they’re they’re ta they may even take in people, hire people as servants. but there’s something deeply social going on. and that the social intelligence of everybody is necessary to make everything work, right? That you can’t no nobody’s an island. There were no what do they call them? Prospectors, yeah. Yeah. It’s too dangerous to be a prospector back then, right? So everything in the Bible that we read at code is masculine.
Nancy (33:34.039)
Exactly. The interdependence. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (33:43.501)
has to account for the the idea that the man was there with his wife and children and and in laws all day.
Nancy (33:49.726)
Exactly. I I I love it. I love it that you have that perspective because so many people don’t. They you know they they have nothing to compare the modern age to. And they have nothing to say, well actually actually, though most of human history, which is millennia, the model has been the that the the father husband is in the home all day. What we know now is anomalous, historically anomalous. And so there’s no reason we should just accept it, but you know, because this is not the norm for most of human history.
Dru Johnson (33:59.578)
Hmm. Hmm.
Dru Johnson (34:12.036)
Hmm.
Dru Johnson (34:20.567)
Okay, so not accept it. Then what what do we do in it said I as somebody who’s sitting in an office right now, not at home, although I with my d I got to work from home this morning, right, and spend time with my granddaughter, which is wonderful. but what what do we do instead?
Nancy (34:39.103)
Yeah, well my book has lots of anecdotes because it’s not a general principle yet. But the gate the pandemic was a game changer because a lot of men were working from home who had not who had not done that before and found out they liked it. Harvard University did a study. and it was reported in in the in the New York Times under this under this title. During the pandemic
Dru Johnson (34:43.63)
Right.
Dru Johnson (34:54.573)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy (35:05.249)
Sixty-eight percent of fathers said they got closer to their children and they don’t want to lose that. In other words, they liked when they got a chance to be home more and integrate work more into their family life, they like their children and they would prefer to keep some sort of, you know, maybe maybe part-time remote work, some sort of flexible hours and so on. so most men actually want to. In in fact,
Dru Johnson (35:09.241)
Mm-hmm.
Mm.
Nancy (35:31.574)
if they allowed to answer anonymously on surveys, Time magazine had a survey seventy percent of men said if given the chance to do flex time, they would do that even if it meant earning less money. More time with family was more important than earning more money. I think the secular script has has downplayed the role that family relationships play in a man’s sense of fulfillment and identity.
It does not acknowledge that. And so it’s very it and it makes it hard for men to say so in the workplace because well, here’s one just one minor example. One of my graduate students was married to a man who works for NASA here in Houston. And he started he started leaving an hour early, just four PM, you know, two days a week, to coach his son’s basketball and football teams. And his boss gave him a hard time, told him he was coasting.
Dru Johnson (36:24.366)
Hm.
Nancy (36:28.823)
But he said it did not ultimately hurt his career. And when his sons grew up, they said, We want to be a dad like you, which is a lot better than any workplace accolades. So I have lots of anec anecdotes like that. The most the most colorful one was again a graduate student whose husband worked in IT. And during the pandemic he came home and he said, Since I was working from home, I had more time to be involved in the homeschooling. They were homeschooling the kids. I had more t
Dru Johnson (36:35.663)
Hm.
Right.
Nancy (36:57.887)
I decided I would be the parent to make lunch. I could take my kids to soccer practice and choir practice. and he was working so much that his wife was able to pick up a part-time job. She was a she was she’s an opera singer. I had a student who was an opera singer. She started a voice she fired started a voice studio teaching. And so the whole family benefited from the additional income.
Dru Johnson (37:16.459)
A part time opera singer.
okay.
Nancy (37:27.733)
And when I was interviewing the husband, he said, the the real kicker was, he said, The time I used to spend commuting to work, I now spend praying with my wife. So what I did in my book is I just tried to give lots of inspiring examples because it’s kind of a w you know, each person has to kind of work it out. and then you have to persuade the the the corporations too. So I went and found data.
Dru Johnson (37:36.783)
Hm.
Nancy (37:54.502)
on how you know working more hours does not mean you’re more productive. And and again the pandemic changed that. Let me give you a quote. a CEO from from Zillow said, you know, prior to the pandemic, you know, we were always worried that people would obviously they were worried that if people weren’t supervised moment by moment, they would slop off. They wouldn’t work. And then here’s his exact well, his exact words. He said the pandemic completely exploded that fear.
We were not seeing any drop in productivity. So I tell some of my students, you know, okay, take these quotes t you know, to your job. because the the CEOs who do look into it find that people with healthy family life are actually better at at their work, at their job. It’s not it’s it’s a win-win.
Dru Johnson (38:46.541)
Yeah. I I think this all has to be balanced as well with I I always say when I’m preaching or teaching about the Sabbath, I say, you know, Americans, we don’t take the Sabbath, but I’m not sure which is more controversial. The fact that God commands his people to take a rest period every week, or that he also commands them to work six days a week, not five. Right? that’s part of the command as well. And and I think there are all kinds of
Nancy (39:09.292)
Ha ha.
Dru Johnson (39:15.619)
great ways that you can work that out in your personal life. But hearing you talk and reading what you’re saying about this is it’s good to also work alongside your children. I mean, I think one one way you could understand what you’re saying is going home and playing with the kids. But I would imagine teaching them to mow the lawn, doing some woodwork with your daughters, teaching my daughters how to change spare tires, which is one thing I had to do at some point.
Nancy (39:26.946)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (39:39.96)
and then and and then I wrongfully assume my son would just somehow pick it up and he did not. So there’s the chauvinist in me, right? and also and you can tell me what you think of this. You know, I because I I get these young people who are like, Well, especially women, I don’t want to sacrifice my my career for children, so I want to put that off in some way. And all these decisions need prayer and wisdom. But I say, like, look, if if the father has to also
Nancy (39:46.016)
Good point.
Dru Johnson (40:08.227)
be able to step back from his career and say, you know what, I’m I’m not gonna take the promotion, I’m not gonna get the kudos, I’m not gonna work, I’m gonna I’m gonna like have to coast or whatever, be a faithful and just a normal faithful employee, so that these other things can happen as well. So I think there’s a very like limited, you know, we’re just slicing up the pie rather than I hear what you’re saying is kind of we’re enlarging the whole pie rather than just dividing it between people, if if I hear you correctly.
Nancy (40:36.961)
Well, first of all, I did do some studies on the men who do step back. Because you’re right, it’s not just women who sacrifice their careers. Men who want to be involved with their families do have to make sacrifices. It’s called the daddy track. And men who consciously say, you know, I’m on the daddy track while my children are young and I know I won’t get the same promotions. I I I interviewed some of these men, you know, who said, Yeah, no, I’m not gonna get the same promotions. I’m not gonna move ahead as fast.
Dru Johnson (40:48.697)
Hmm.
Nancy (41:05.279)
Th there were there were also men who who who left the workforce and started their own companies or whatever so they could have more time with their children. and one of them that I interviewed, he was a jeweler, jewelry maker. And he was working for other companies, so he stayed he he started a home-based company where he wor you know, he he he does costume jewelry for various companies. At any rate as his children got older, he integrated them into the business and and his wife.
Dru Johnson (41:32.015)
Hm.
Nancy (41:34.722)
He and his wife were now working full-time, they’re making enough money that the he and his wife were both full-time and now they were integrating their children. And so they really were reproducing the colonial, the the pre-modern s setup of, you know, the whole family working together. And but he’s one of the people who told me I had to s I had to s pull back from my work. Because working at home, the hardest thing is to stop. You know. Because you can just it you’re right there.
Dru Johnson (41:46.318)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (42:00.335)
Yes.
Nancy (42:04.267)
He said the hardest thing was to know when to stop and I had to really be committed to committed to having time with my family. I watched some of my friends move forward faster in their careers. You know? I and I had to I had to be willing to do that. To watch my friends, I I did not have as my my success didn’t come as quickly because I wanted to f focus on my family. Focus on my family. But yeah, it is true that we sometimes forget that.
Dru Johnson (42:26.819)
Yeah.
Nancy (42:33.801)
Men too, if they want to be really good, you know, involved, engaged fathers, have to make hard career choices. And some of my but some some people have criticized me saying, well, you know, work from home is not necessarily best for all people. No, I’m talking about when you have young children. You know, my concern is the children. once your children are out of the home, yes, it really is.
Dru Johnson (42:53.229)
Yeah. And it’s a fleeting phase of of parent I mean, it goes so quickly, right? I’m now on the other side of it I’m saying like, wow, that was just that was just a phase and I’ve still got, you know, decades and decades of marriage and grandparenting left, right? So
Nancy (43:08.255)
Yes. And and this also, I I was really glad you talked about the Hebrew, you know, the pre modern work situation, which since fathers were working with their children, you know, historians say that fathers literally spent as much time with their children as mothers did. You know, that’s just so surprising to us. But what about mothers? Mothers were not cut off from the economic world. If they could do economically productive work from the home, you know, when it was done
home manufacturer, women w could be involved in creative, interesting, productive work. So that women were also not just trapped in in a home where all the interesting and productive activities have been taken out. You know, Dorothy Sayers, the the Christian essayist, she has a wonderful she has a wonderful brief treatment of this how no wonder women don’t want to stay home when all the i all the interesting intellectual work has been steadily drained out of the home.
Dru Johnson (43:54.339)
Yes.
Nancy (44:07.821)
You know, all you have left is cleaning and early childcare. So you have to be intentional too. I’ve this has been one of my main themes in in in my writings for a long time has been bringing work home for for women. You know, in the past I’ve written written about it primarily for the sake of women. The you know, ri written encouraging articles on how women have managed to find ways to integrate part time work into into the home while their children are young.
Dru Johnson (44:10.735)
Right.
Nancy (44:33.277)
And and I have a a bit of it in in this book, but this book I decided to focus on men. But but you know, this is part of the answer to feminism, which was where we started. P part of the answer is yes, you know, those of us who have skills, some people love being home the homemakers and that’s their skill, which is wonderful. And then for those of us, you know, who sc have other skills, how to bring that home, how to how to have part-time home-based work so that you can integrate it with your family.
I think is the one of the most important answers to feminism, because that feminism too t got its start by you know, when all of the home manufacture was taken out of the home and women were left with, you know, virtually nothing left, like I said, cleaning and early childcare. you see the you can see this again in the 19th century literature, women saying, the what men do is what’s most interesting, there’s nothing left in the home.
Dru Johnson (45:30.937)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy (45:32.929)
you know, to to inspire us. So it’s the answer to feminism as well is the recovery of a more family oriented work life. And you know, we see some of that, for example, in homeschooling families. They’re they’re bringing education back. Because education was in the home as well until mid twentieth century really.
Dru Johnson (45:46.115)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (45:54.692)
Yeah, and if I if I hear you correctly, the you know, the church might do a disservice if their only message to mothers is, hey, mothering is the most important vacation, you know, vocation you can do. Really nothing almost the kind of subliminal, nothing else you do matters if you don’t get this right kind of a thing, versus an integrated like yeah, we homeschooled some of our kids at some points. And I remember thinking, I get why homeschooling is interesting because I have to relearn some
junior high and high school stuff that I completely forgotten about, you know. I have to make sure I actually do understand English grammar. I can’t just pretend to understand it, right? And
Nancy (46:32.971)
And and you fill in the gaps filling in the gaps of your education was fun for me too. Like classical literature that I’d never that I had never read. I got I got a chance to read with my kids.
Dru Johnson (46:37.261)
Yes. Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (46:43.267)
Yeah. And so I think that I this kind of blending I what I hear you doing, and especially with the examples you give in the book, is just opening up all the different possibilities of how this can work and the benefits of that kind of of every everybody gets something out of this system where moms and dads work together on both the intellectual side, the raising side, the chores side, the work side, rather than distribution. it’s
Nancy (47:08.247)
Yeah.
Dru Johnson (47:09.197)
I d haven’t thought about it this way, but it’s very much a distribution of labor system right now. You stay over there and do your thing and I’ll go over here and do my thing and we’ll meet at dinner. Yeah.
Nancy (47:13.463)
It is.
Nancy (47:16.973)
I you’re you’re right, exactly. It’s a fair economic term. It’s it’s ac what’s interesting is that surveys are be being done now on millennials and Gen Z and they’re not satisfied with that division of labor. They want a more integrated life. And so millennials it started with surveys of millennials where they said, I you know, fathers want more time with their children and mothers, you know, without sacrificing their children, often want more time for their other skills, career skills.
Dru Johnson (47:27.491)
Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Nancy (47:45.496)
But then Gen Z outdoes even millennials, it turns out. I found of I used it recently in a lecture. I found a study of Gen Z, and it said they’re the most hands-on dads of all. And it had the numbers, you know, a little graph. But the younger men are saying, We we don’t like this division of labor that’s left. Each one of which each one of us has half of life. You know, you know, we don’t want to both be half of life, we want the whole life.
Dru Johnson (48:01.345)
yeah.
Dru Johnson (48:11.287)
Mm.
Nancy (48:15.517)
And we wanna be able to share it. So younger men I think it it’s very encouraging that that they’re saying we want to be more involved with our families.
Dru Johnson (48:24.601)
Well, okay, one final question, because you have used the word secular quite a bit here. And I wonder, what do you mean by secular? And then do you do you think there is an actual sacred world and a secular world, or are they somehow in contact with each other?
Nancy (48:45.335)
Well, Christians don’t ac accept the division, of course. You know, I mean, if you want a holistic Christian worldview, you don’t accept a sacred secular split. But that doesn’t mean the world doesn’t have one. The world still has one. But here here’s let me give you the historical an answer though. So after the Industrial Revolution, there also grew up a large public arena, right? With with well, factories starting with factories and offices.
Dru Johnson (48:55.063)
Yeah, well that’s for sure.
Nancy (49:11.961)
financial institutions, the the growing state and and universities. And many people began to argue that these large public institutions sh needed to be value-free. They needed to operate by scientific principles. Well, value-free was code for don’t bring your Christian faith into the public realm. And since it was men who were getting that secularized education and working in the secularized work workplace.
Dru Johnson (49:30.937)
Right. Right.
Nancy (49:39.01)
They did become secular in their thinking earlier than women did, which is where we get a lot of our sort of double standard today, where we there’s kind of an assumption that women are more naturally spiritual or more naturally moral, that men are more naturally prone to sin and vice. But that only that only arise arose after the Industrial Revolution. People did not think that before. All the way back to the ancient Greeks and Romans, people thought men were morally superior.
And their thinking was like this. The ra the insight into right and wrong is a rational insight, and they thought men were more rational, and therefore men were more virtuous. And you know the the root of the word virtue. V I R means
Dru Johnson (50:13.38)
Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (50:25.327)
I don’t know. No. I know Arete. I don’t sorry, I I know the Greek, not the he not the Latin. Yeah.
Nancy (50:26.727)
mean i it Latin. In Latin. Right, right. virtue, V I R is Latin for man. It means man, like in viral, you know, a viral man. So virtue, the term had overtones of manly strength and honor. Whereas today it’s often used just, you know, female sexual virtue. But it all the way up until this the I
Dru Johnson (50:39.288)
Yeah, yeah.
Nancy (50:55.617)
I try to people help people realize what a huge change this was. For the first time ever in human history, women were put on some kind of a pedestal and said to be morally and spir and spiritually superior to men. That had never been the case before. In fact, in the Middle Ages, they thought women were more more prone to sexual temptation. I mean that that that’s how big this the shift has happened. So I think this is another thing that can help Christians is to realize that that
Is a secular view. That double standard. And that I I I I sometimes ask Christian young people. I I was interviewed on a podcast by a young couple that had recently married. so I turned the question back on them. I said, Do you think there still is a double standard? And they said, Absolutely. They had just come through the dating stage. In in in the dating world, the cr including the Christian dating world.
Women are thought to be, you know, th they have to hold the line morally, you know, hold the line on how how s how far the sex physical involvement goes. And and they of course they need to dress f dress modestly because men are, you know, just under the surface of this roiling, boiling, you know, l lust that it’s threatening to break through at any moment and that women have to hold it clamped down.
Dru Johnson (52:08.591)
We’re just monkeys.
Nancy (52:16.413)
even my own son felt like this was the message he was getting from church, you know, that that you’re basically an an the beast within, you know, the the Darwinist message, that you’re basically a beast within that would kind of have a this coating of Christianity over, but but the true nature, you know, is almost this Darwinian view of men. So this is something that that church needs to counter as well, is that
Dru Johnson (52:23.214)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy (52:42.795)
We should be absolutely confident that men are just as virtuous as women. Women they are not more prone to sin advice. The they are just as capable of following God’s law and and living up to his, you know, to his ideals, his moral ideals as women are. and and meanwhile you we should take a little bit of the pressure off women as well. Because especially in the dating world when they feel like it’s all up to them, it’s very difficult. And by the way, that explains feminism too.
Dru Johnson (53:03.437)
Right.
Nancy (53:13.191)
the more recent form of feminism, especially third wave feminist, is like, I’m not whole I’m not being the moral the person who’s morally responsible anymore. That’s that’s not my job. I refuse. Get s get me off the pedestal. You know? they were tired of being the moral conscience of men. This is how the history books r refer to it is when when they talk about how, the secular definition of masculinity you know became more Dalinian
Dru Johnson (53:24.333)
Right.
Nancy (53:41.538)
They s they said women were set up as the moral guardians of society. And part of understanding feminism is they said, we’re not going to do that anymore. That’s not right. It’s not right to hold us responsible for male behavior. So the church needs to have higher standards f for men and not give in to the notion that they’re just naturally going to be more prone to sin and vice and you know, and and lust and unfaithfulness, etc.
Dru Johnson (53:45.433)
Hm.
Dru Johnson (53:56.302)
Right.
Nancy (54:11.467)
that they are just as capable of you know, of being virtuous. Go ahead.
Dru Johnson (54:11.661)
Yeah. And the kind of sorry. the the well and what you think virtue wise, which I’m cautiously optimistic about virtue discussions, but what you think a is a person is capable of determines kind of your expectations of them. And so if men just I mean, not to draw on a particular example, but when people said, that’s just locker room talk,
I was in the military seven years and I’ve been in lots of locker rooms. I actually have never heard anybody talk the certain ways, right, about women or men. Like I I actually don’t think that that’s how most men talk about things when they’re behind closed doors talking to each other. but but if you were to talk like that, you now have this great excuse called, he’s you know, boys will be boys kind of mentality, right? and my and I definitely hear from my daughters this
Nancy (55:01.057)
Yes.
Dru Johnson (55:06.165)
I do not want to be the moral standard for the men around me and especially growing up in the New York City area where cat calling is a a daily phenomenon versus you know other places in the country where it’s not so rampant. Well, professor Nancy Pearcy, is it Percy or Pearcy?
Nancy (55:25.879)
You’re right, Pearcy. P Peercy. Mm-hmm.
Dru Johnson (55:27.257)
Piercey, yeah. thank you so much for this book. I I think the the title is brilliant, but I’m sure a lot of people see that title and they go, this is just some, you know, celebration of raw masculinity. It couldn’t be anything further from the truth, unless you mean by raw, you mean something innate and natural.
Nancy (55:48.097)
Well, actually when I started the book I got totally opposite reactions. this was this has been the most controversial book I’ve written, which did surprise me. Well, my earlier book, which is up there on on on the moral issues on on homosexuality, transgenderism and abortion, I thought that would be But no, masculinity is a greater trigger word. But when people heard I was writing the book, you know, I I had re a lot of reading groups. I guess I get feedback to improve my writing that way.
Dru Johnson (55:57.187)
Hm. yeah, I can believe that.
Dru Johnson (56:04.493)
Right. You would think
Nancy (56:18.059)
And they would tell their family and friends that they were going through a a a manuscript on masculinity. And actually the most common response was, Why is a woman writing a book on masculinity? Who’s and and here was the question, whose side is she on? Who’s whose side is she? And actually most of them assumed a woman writing on the subject was going to be a male-bashing feminist. And then in more conservative circles, they kind of assumed
Dru Johnson (56:30.415)
Mm.
Dru Johnson (56:34.956)
Hm. Yeah, of course. Yeah.
Dru Johnson (56:42.03)
Mm-hmm.
Nancy (56:46.821)
what you said, you know, it’s gonna be a you rip-waring defense of masculinity because that’s you know, we have to counter the feminist culture. And and so neither side was completely happy with the book. The ones who like it are people like you who that’s like people who want an objective account. Yeah I that’s my goal was to have an objective account of of where this controversy is coming from and how we can respond to it.
Dru Johnson (56:59.918)
Well done.
Dru Johnson (57:13.455)
Well, I think an evidence based exploration of the topic is always a good thing, a good and biblical thing to enter. again, Professor Nancy Pearcy, thank you so much for your wisdom.
Nancy (57:27.575)
Thanks for having me on. I appreciate it.
Dru Johnson (57:31.514)
Okay.
