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welcome to this initial episode of Raising Men

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my name is Sean Dawson

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I'm starting this podcast because well

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the world my boy will inherit

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is nothing like the one that I grew up in

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I'm not an expert with all the answers

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I'm a dad who's just trying to recognize his humility

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and ask better questions

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if you're listening to this

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maybe you've been asking some of the same ones

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I'll tell you what keeps me up at night

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we're raising boys in a culture

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that's simultaneously telling them

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that they're too much they're not enough

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they're too aggressive and not assertive enough

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they're too emotional but also too stoic

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the growing up with unlimited access to everything

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except clarity

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about what it actually means to be a good man

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and while we their parents

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are debating masculinity

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in conference rooms and comment sections

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our sons are learning from YouTube algorithms

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and social media influencers

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they're getting their blueprint for manhood

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from people who've never changed a diaper

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or stayed up all night with a sick kid

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or took him to the hospital

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frankly

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they're getting their blueprint from people

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you'd shield them from if you ran into them on a train

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let me tell you a story now

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my wife and I we agonized

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over the decision about whether or not to have kids

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so I did what I presume all engineers do

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I conducted an analysis and a field study of the matter

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now I

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at the time

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I was traveling a lot

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so I sat next to a lot of strangers on airplanes

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and I interviewed just about everybody I knew

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and everybody I met on those planes

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about how they felt about their decision

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whether or not to have kids

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the main thing that I Learned

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is that there was no wrong answer

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pretty much everyone I talked to was pretty happy

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about whatever decision they made

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but the thing that I noticed

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was that the parents were happy in this fundamental

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almost spiritual way whereas the non parents

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well

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they were mostly just bragging

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about how much money they still had

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the best response that I got

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came from a person I very much admire

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we were

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we were sitting on his porch

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and his gorgeous wife and their three year old son

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we're playing Frisbee

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with their border collie in the yard

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he said

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you know

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said I love my wife she's great

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but that boy

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that boy is my soulmate

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man my experience

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in the early days

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could not have been more opposite to this

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one of the suspicions I had

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in fact is that

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all of that positivity that I experienced

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during my research was just a ruse to make non parents

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just as miserable as the parents were

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my wife and my lives were obliterated

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it was so grueling and awful that my wife and I

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we were at each other's throats constantly

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and we had to make an explicit

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agreement that we wouldn't get divorced

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before the boy was at least a year old

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for example uh

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his stomach was both very elastic

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but also way smaller than his appetite

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so he would projectile vomit

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three or four times his body length

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like a bottle of Diet Coke

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with a Mentos dropped into it

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between that

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and the dirty diapers that we left all over the place

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the dogs were in paradise

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believe me

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now the first time

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I had a twinge of what my friend was talking about

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with the soulmate thing

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the boy was about 4 months old

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and I just finished changing his diaper

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I held out my index fingers

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and he reached up and he pulled himself up by

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it was the very first time

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that I taught him anything at all

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and it clicked for me that my job my role

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is to foster an environment

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where he can build the skills

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that he needs to make his place in the world

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and for the very first time I felt it

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I understood a little bit

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about what my friend meant by soulmate

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it reminded me of a time years earlier

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when I was 12 years old

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I went on a work trip with my dad one summer

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now this was towards the end of the trip

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we were in Arlington Texas

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and I was stuck for two days in a hotel room

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literally looking down at the six flags amusement park

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that was across the highway from our hotel

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but I was completely I was unable to go

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it was it was kind of torture frankly

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but the Texas State Fair was going on

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and on the very last day of the trip

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my dad took me to the fair

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now the centerpiece of the Texas State Fair

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is this enormous Ferris wheel

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my dad and I rode it together

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near the top

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looking out over the lights of the city

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my dad puts his arm around me and he says

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I think you're gonna be a great man someday

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and you know

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I was too wrapped up in my own stuff at the time

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I'm 12 going on 13

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but what I realize now

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is that this was his way of saying to me

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however imperfectly son

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you're my soulmate

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my wife and I we have some friends

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who lost their two and a/2 year old boy in this

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freak accident they were hiking in the woods

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and a tree just fell down and hit the boy

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he was gone just like that his dad

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standing right next to him

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and I think about that dad

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every day

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that is the manifestation of all of my life's fears

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and worries all at once

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I wouldn't know how to live through it

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and it drove home to me

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that you can lose them at any time

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so what do you do

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well one of the things I did was to take my boy camping

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I'd mentioned it as a possibility one time

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and he kind of pestered me about it

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he asked me about it several times

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and so I set it up and one of the pleasures

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that I find about being a parent it's

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it's like when

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you meet a friend

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who's never seen a movie that you particularly like

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like oh

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my gosh you've never seen The Usual Suspects

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we have to go see it right now

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and then you get to experience it anew

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through their eyes that's

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well that's the way your kid is about everything

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and camping was definitely like that

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this is my first time in a sleeping bag

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and this is my first time being inside of a tent

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we built a fire we made hot dogs

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s'mores about 1:30 in the morning

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we were sleeping in the tent

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it was very cold

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very dark

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and we could

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we could hear the coyotes roaming around and howling

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and he stirred

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he said dad

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can you keep me warm

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I unzipped my sleeping bag a little bit

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I pulled him close

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I said of course buddy

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I'll always keep you warm

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but what I was really trying to say

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was son you're my soulmate

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he doesn't understand that any more than I did

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on the Ferris wheel back then

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and hopefully I'll get better over time

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and decades from now he'll be able to say it to his son

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a little bit better than I said it to him

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now

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this isn't a podcast about returning to some mythical

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good old days this frankly

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those days weren't that good for a lot of people

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this this is about moving forward with intention

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because here's what I've Learned

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our sons they don't need us to be perfect

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they need us to be present

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they don't need us to have all the answers

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they need us to be willing

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to wrestle with difficult questions

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questions like

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how do we teach them to be strong without being brittle

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how do we navigate a culture that either works

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the worst parts of masculinity

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or tries to vilify it out of existence entirely

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how do we show them that real strength

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stems from recognizing and admitting

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when you're wrong how do we prepare them for a world

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where emotional intelligence is mandatory

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how do we raise men who can lead with both conviction

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and compassion

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maybe the hardest question of all is

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what kind of man should I model for my son

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now look

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I don't want to be dramatic

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but the statistics about this stuff are really sobering

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young men

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they're struggling with purpose

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with connection

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and mental health at unprecedented rates

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they're more isolated they're more likely

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I'm sorry they're less likely to have close friendships

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and they're increasingly disconnected

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from the kind of mentorship that used to happen

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naturally

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but here's what gives me hope

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intentional parents

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parents who are willing to do the work

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not just on their sons but on themselves too

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because our boys

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they're not really even just listening to what we say

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they're watching what we do

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and they're becoming who we are

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raising men will be honest

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conversations about raising sons with purpose

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some episodes

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might just be me wrestling with questions that

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keep me up at night

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others will be conversations with parents

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experts and folks who've walked this road before us

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who've succeeded and failed

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we'll talk about discipline that builds character

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not compliance about teaching boys to navigate emotions

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without drowning in them

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about raising men who can disagree without demonizing

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who can be confident without being arrogant

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who can be tender without being weak

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now it's not always gonna be comfortable

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but it will always be authentic

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and it will always be real

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so if you're still listening

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I want to invite you to something bigger than a podcast

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I want you to

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invite you into this notion of intentional parenthood

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because frankly the world needs more men of character

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and character does not happen by accident

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it's forged in the daily decisions of parents

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who refuse to let their sons be raised by default

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by a potentially toxic culture

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so here's what happens next

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subscribe to the show and really importantly

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if you can share it with another dad

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who might be asking the same questions

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and connect with me on social at Raising Men Podcast

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because this conversation doesn't end

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when the episode does most importantly

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take a look at your son today

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really look at him

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ask yourself

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what kind of man is he gonna become

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because of who I choose to be

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so it starts

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thanks so much for being here

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so let's go raise some men together