In this insightful interview, John Bickley speaks to Dr. Jordan Peterson about his new Daily Wire+ series “Parenting.” The famed clinical psychologist offers profound reflections on the moral authority of parents, the necessity of household boundaries, and the sacred responsibilities of motherhood and fatherhood in cultivating emotionally secure, socially capable children amidst today’s cultural chaos. Get the facts first on Morning Wire.
Chapter 1: What are the challenges and rewards of parenting?
There is nothing you'll do in life that's more challenging, difficult and rewarding than being a parent. Nothing with greater highs or lower lows. You have little kids for a very short period of time. It is a major mistake not to notice that and not to appreciate it.
That was Dr. Jordan Peterson from his new Daily Wire series, Parenting, in which the famed clinical psychologist sits down with parents to discuss their struggles in raising happy and healthy children in a societal moment fraught with challenges.
When a disciplinary issue arises, you need to make space to master it. I have to not do what I thought I was going to do for 10 minutes to set this right.
Chapter 2: What inspired Dr. Peterson's new parenting series?
In this episode, we sit down with Dr. Peterson to discuss the launch of his new series, what inspired him to create it, and the cultural trends he hopes it will help to address. I'm Daily Wire executive editor John Bickley with Georgia Howe. It's Sunday, May 25th, and this is a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
Joining us now is Dr. Jordan Peterson, clinical psychologist and host of the new Daily Wire Plus series, Parenting. Dr. Peterson, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks for the invitation. Look, there's been a lot of excitement around the office about your new show. I say that in complete sincerity. Everybody's really amped about it.
You've released episode zero to the public, which is what we're calling it around here. It's sort of a teaser, but episode one goes live Sunday. I wanna, of course, ask you about the show, but first I wanted to ask you something personal. What was one of your proudest parenting moments?
Chapter 3: What are some proud parenting moments Dr. Peterson shares?
My daughter, after she had surgery to replace one of her joints in her leg, I don't remember if it was her ankle or her hip. I think it was her hip. She decided to take a motorcycle course because her mobility was impaired and that wouldn't enable her to drive a scooter. And that was a risky endeavor and it was challenging for her and frightening. That was good. in many ways.
And it also did provide her with mobility for several years and made a huge difference in her life, a hugely positive difference. It also gave her a kind of indomitable confidence to be able to do something that's dangerous like that and risky, even in the face of bone fragility, let's say. So that was good. There's been a lot of moments, mostly with my kids. I'm pretty damn happy with them.
Almost all the time. And that's been the case throughout their life. So, I mean, we've had our difficulties, most of them health related, you know, and if you have to have difficulties, well, those are sort of necessary in a way, you know what I mean? And maybe we can cope with necessary difficulties in life. I don't know how well we cope with unnecessary difficulties.
That's an interesting distinction. Yeah, a lot of maybe... or self-consciousness when it's unnecessary. A lot of stuff that we bring on ourselves, maybe that adds another wrinkle and complexity there.
Oh, yeah, yeah. Well, it does. It really does. Life has enough instability, let's say, and uncertainty without adding uncertainty You're the additional overlay of unnecessary suffering and stupidity. Unnecessary suffering is really hard on people, you know. And so I suppose because there's an element of moral culpability to it that isn't there with with an illness. That's a rough division.
And I mean, one of the things that I'm trying to help parents be confident in is their moral right to parent, their moral right to run the household in a manner that... brings peace and abundance. There are obligation to do that. We're afraid of our children in the Western world. And that's partly a reflection of an overweening maternal love, I suppose.
But we're afraid that we'll damage our children by parenting them. But, you know, you damage your children by not parenting them as well. And the parenting that you should be doing is the establishment of a relationship. And if the relationship is solid, you don't allow and certainly don't encourage your children to do anything that is counter to their best interest, especially socially.
So I'm trying to fortify parents to understand that they can do that and it is their responsibility and not something harmful.
You mentioned Western culture, this being a problem with Western culture. Is this a modern phenomenon, this idea that sort of
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Chapter 4: How can parents effectively manage disciplinary issues?
Chapter 5: Why are parents afraid of parenting in Western culture?
So there's the philosophical element, which is a child is perfect and good until they're warped by culture, which is completely one-sided, insane, progressive, naive argument. And then I think the other thing that likely happened was that after World War II, We became wealthy enough in the Western world so that our children and teenagers had disposable income.
And then they were heavily targeted by corporations, which have a right to market, but heavily targeted by corporations. And their narcissism, their self-centered narcissism was enormous. encouraged and exaggerated. And that's kind of where the permissive consumerist culture of the 1960s emerged.
That was when, you know, at the beginning of the 60s, you still saw shows like My Three Sons or Father Knows Best. Can you Oh, yeah. Well, one of the few positive examples I've seen of a man in recent comedic history is Ted Lasso. You know, and even Ted is divorced and has his problems, but he's a very good mentor. That's quite rare. Saw another good man in Landman. Billy Bob Thornton.
Yeah, yeah. And so that's more of dramatic. And so some of that's starting to make a comeback. But a lot of that dissolved in the hyper permissive 60s. And all that 60s culture, including its progressivism, was a form of politicized immaturity and a mindless hedonism. It's not useful and not sustainable.
Chapter 6: What is the role of parents in a child's moral development?
With the parents that you've spoken to so far for the show, do you feel like a lot of their questions are rooted in this issue, this idea of a fear of embracing sort of the harder edge parts of the parenting roles?
It depended on the parent. Some of the people I talked to had parents Genuine problems, let's say. I'm not trying to make a distinction exactly between the kinds of problems I dealt with, but some of the parents I saw had a very ill child, for example. And that's just a whole rat's nest of insane, inevitable problems. trouble and conflict. It's certainly something that can split a marriage apart.
There are other parents whose problems were very much likely a consequence of the disciplinary strategies they imposed or failed to impose. And so part of what I did with the former people was to strategize about management approaches to degenerating illness, which is the worst kind of illness, obviously, to having a child. With the disciplinary issues, well, we talked strategy and also goal.
You know, you want to have a sense in your household of how you would want the relationships and the household to operate. You need a vision of that. And that's what allows you to detect deviations from that. And then you have to negotiate disciplinary strategies when that isn't making itself manifest. It's not helpful to have children who are whiny and miserable. It's not pleasant for you.
It's not pleasant for them. Parents often use intermittent reinforcement when their children are whiny and miserable. So here's how to have a terrible child. Imagine your child will whine and complain when they want something. Okay, if you want to have that happen all the time, then vary the amount that they have to whine and complain before you capitulate unpredictably.
That's what a slot machine does. It rewards intermittently and variably. And that's impossible to eradicate because what the child learns is if they're persistent enough, you will cave. And you do that 30 times around bedtime, for example, you'll have a problem that might take years to resolve.
I might have caved a few times. I'm just going to go ahead and confess that.
Yeah, well, you know, people... It's hard. A few times, it is hard. But generally, especially with things that repeat every day, you know, mealtimes, bedtimes, these little islands of stability and routine, it's very good to be pretty rigorous around those events, even during times of illness and strife. Because otherwise you get regression in the child.
And then, well, and then you have to deal with the consequences of the schedule, let's say, falling apart. It's good to have a vision of household peace and prosperity and abundance. Like your household is a walled garden. That's what paradise means, by the way. Paradise means walled garden. And the walls are there because they protect you from the outside and they circumscribe a space.
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Chapter 7: How has consumerism affected parenting styles?
So now you want to adjust the boundary so the child can expand his or her exploration. But boundaries of the abstract sort, so the principles by which you run the household, produce the kind of predictable stability within which play and exploration can take place, and they quell anxiety. So you're doing your child and you and your wife a great favor by imposing that regularity.
Now, there's another way of thinking about boundaries that the Rousseauian types and the progressives miss completely, right? So you might say, if you're playing basketball, that the rules are boundaries and they're restrictions. You can't do this. You can't do that. It's like, yeah, but they're also enabling principles. So good rules are enabling principles in that they're game rules.
And so it's a misapprehension to only think about a regulated environment as fences and enclosures and restrictions. It's like, well, you can't play... Football, when you're playing basketball, and I suppose that's a boundary, but without the rules, there's no game, right? And there's something that should be burnt into your psyche. Without the rules, there is no game.
Now, if the rules are well-formulated, minimal, right, but enforced, like a good referee, then not only can the game be played... It can be played with multiple people and it can improve as it plays. Right. And then it can generalize to other games.
And that's the purpose of sports, for example, is to teach you to be skilled, but to be a good sport so that you're invited to play many games across the course of your life. That's a very good conceptual schemata for what you're doing as a parent.
100%.
What are the kinds of things that you see that are actually weaknesses in a lot of parenting approaches?
Well, I think you actually put your finger on it. Like, your role as a parent... There's two that are fundamental. One is to encourage your child to be maximally socially acceptable. And you want to have that more or less in place by the age of four or there'll be trouble and it'll be severe and it will be hard to fix. And then your household should be a proxy for the real world.
Which means that it's your responsibility as a parent to encourage behavior in the household that would translate well to the real world. So your children roughly should conduct themselves at mealtimes as they would conduct themselves in the house of a potentially welcoming stranger or a restaurant. Now, maybe that's a little bit too high a bar for the typical domestic meal, but I don't know.
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Chapter 8: What does a 'walled garden' mean for a household?
One of the things we learned with my son in particular, who was a more assertive and competitive person in some ways, especially when he was young than my daughter, was very easy child until she became ill. Julian would start to fray at the edges because he was a pushy little rat. And my wife and I would get together and say, okay, that kid, he's starting to like fray a bit.
So like two weeks, he's not getting away with anything, right? And so we'd link arms and vow to be a united front. And every single time, it was quite shocking because I didn't really realize this would happen. Every single time he liked us better. It was market like he thrived with that attention because that discriminating attention is that's the capital that you offer your children.
There's nothing they want more than your attention, your differentiated attention. And so.
Use it. Use it for the good. And you say this, you say this in your sort of teaser episode. I mean, what an honor to have that role, to embrace it. It's hard, but in the end, so rewarding, just like you really convey in your series. Dr. Peterson, thank you so much for joining us. My pleasure. Thanks very much for the invitation and the opportunity.
That was Dr. Jordan Peterson and talking about his new Daily Wire series, Parenting. And this has been a weekend edition of Morning Wire.
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