Welcome to Family Policy Matters, a weekly podcast and radio show produced by the North Carolina Family Policy Council. Hi, I'm John Rustin, President of NC Family. And each week on Family Policy Matters, we welcome experts and policy leaders to discuss topics that impact faith and family here in North Carolina.
Our prayer is that this program will help encourage and equip you to be a voice of persuasion for all of us. Your family values in your community, state and nation. And now here's the host of Family Policy Matters, Tracy Devette Griggs. Thanks for joining us this week for Family Policy Matters. Many faithful parents are concerned about the lessons and pressures today's culture is presenting to our children, and rightly so. We know we want our children to be different from the mainstream culture, but are often overwhelmed at the prospect of how we go about doing that in our homes and families. Well, we're joined today by Dr. John Cutabat, professor of philosophy at Christendom College, where he lectures on virtue, fatherhood, friendship, homesteading and household.
Now, those are some courses I would love to take. He's author of the book True Friendship, Where Virtue Becomes Happiness, and offers articles and online courses through his website, LifeCraft. He joins us today to discuss his recent article, The Pain of Being Raised Different. Dr. John Cutabat, welcome to Family Policy Matters. Thank you, Tracy.
Great to be here. All right. So first of all, let me ask about the title of your most recent article, The Pain of Being Raised Different. I'm assuming that's not a grammatical error. I mean, you meant to say being raised different as opposed to differently. So what do you mean by that? Of course, we could use the adverb to because the raising is done differently.
But you're absolutely right. Did make an adjective on purpose because I'm focusing on the pain of the child and the child who experiences himself herself as being different. So the pain of being raised different from those around you. And as a parent, as someone who thinks a lot about parenting and trying to do it the best that we can.
It really became more and more clear to me over the years that this was a very significant thing that my wife and I were not so much noticing. We were very intentional about how can we do best by our children? What do they need? What do we want them to have? What do we want them to not have?
You know, we want them to be doing what they want to not be doing. But we weren't realizing how significant it was in their experience that, wow, if we actually are succeeding in forming them the way we want to, they're going to have this very difficult experience of I don't fit in it kind of Who am I? How do I live among these peers?
How do I have friends? So that pain is the focus point for me. Okay. Now, I personally was raised different. It was not a religious sense, though. And I don't know that my parents were very intentional about it.
They were very different person. And I think a lot of people may have that same sense. But you're not talking about that, right? You talk about this more of an intentional way of raising your kids to be different. So talk about that.
What are the virtues and the signs that we're going to be looking for? Here's the thing I'm taking for granted that we have parents who have a view that just de facto at this point is quite different from the dominant view around us. Now, of course, we're painting with a broad stroke here. There are certainly people out there that agree with parents on the point of I want to raise my child to have a certain positive character. But this is very countercultural. Generally, this is a different way of raising our children. More and more, it has become dominant in our culture to think in terms of success in the way that is a more kind of material wealth, pleasure, popularity, so much that is encouraged by the social media, right? That we have a very different view of what kind of happiness is, what human life is about. And then you have a more, we'll say, traditional view that human life is about becoming a certain kind of person.
It's not so much having things. It's becoming a certain kind of person, having certain kinds of rich relationships and connections, being a part of a certain kind of community to simply raise children in that way, which is very much rooted in a faith tradition. It also goes back even prior to Christianity. I mean, you have this in the great Greeks.
I'm a philosopher. You know, this is very much you find this in Aristotle, the great Greco-Roman tradition. So those who wants to do that and pass that on, raise their children in that way are finding, wow, we have to be very intentional about this. Otherwise, our children will take on views that are contrary to it. So it's not really that this is just a new generation and they're having the same old, same old issues. I mean, literally, it's more difficult for parents now because they are fighting against a culture that may not define virtues as respecting elders or going to church as we used to.
It's more difficult. Absolutely. And look, this isn't a woe is me doomsday approach. It's living in the truth. We have to be realistic as a Christian. I think it's critical that we have a position of faith, of hope.
There's great reason for hope here. But at the same time, the truth shall set you free. We're going to live in the truth here. And we have to recognize that the dominant approach of our society, the dominant things are being conveyed, especially through the so powerful means of the media, of entertainment, of social communication, of the Internet is encouraging anti-virtues. It's encouraging an approach to life that prioritizes what should not be prioritized.
And raising children is fundamentally about teaching them to see what is more important versus what's less important. And so now we're working against the current. Again, it takes intentionality.
It can be done. But now we need to focus on, hey, that's going to take a toll on them. We're going to have to be ready to be with them. Not only are we going to have to be very intentional about passing on certain things that others aren't going to be teaching them, so we need to teach them. But then also we have to be very alert to their feeling isolated, to their being lonely and being challenged by all those around them.
Hey, maybe what your parents are giving you isn't worth it because you're not going to be able to have any friends. That part of our forming them is to see that's part of the issue. Speaking of friendships, the point you make is that these virtues are actually key to good friendships, right?
Valuable friendships, lasting friendships and even the happiness, a long lasting happiness in our children's lives. Talk about that. Why is that the case? Great point. Things aren't always as they appear and especially to the young isn't at the center of the art of raising a forming children of this great thing called education, which all of the greatest minds from time immemorial have always bent their energy around because it's difficult, because it is going to take so much. Is how do we get them to see things that are hard for them to see?
How do we get them to focus on what really is going to be for their true good versus what's for their passing good? And your point, that question absolutely highlights this aspect of the kind of virtues. Let's name a couple restraint, temperance in the realm of sexuality. Right today, it's powerfully promoted to them that your happiness is connected to not being inhibited, being able to do as you please here, whereas, in fact, the wisdom of the tradition, which is so borne out in experience, is that restraint, temperance, chastity are part of the gift of life. They're part of what empower you to live a truly human life in great relationships. It's hard for the young to see that we have to help them to see that, especially when it's being so powerfully promoted otherwise. So, yes, for instance, encouraging an attitude of respect between the sexes and of restraint is a key to their having the kind of relationships they so badly want to have.
So we are setting them up for good relationships. But in the meantime, as we're in the forming of them, it's very difficult for them to see that because they feel so different from those around them. So, again, that's going to have to be part of how we form them is also dealing with that special challenge. OK, well, how do you go about insulating your child against the difficulties they're going to face in being different?
Great question, but there's only so much insulation. How about if we say fortifying? One of the key things, and this is the gift I love by a divine providence, it's dealing with challenges is always an opportunity for things to be better than they would have been. That we have to work on this is going to have very good fruits. This is going to make us have to go deeper in our relationship with them.
The main recommendation, the main takeaway here is love and encouraging parents on this, and it really strikes them. We've got to recognize we've got to see through our children's eyes of the pain they have. What does that mean? That means we need to be present with them. It means we need to be ready to draw them out. It means we need to be ready to suffer with them. And at times, just recognize that what we're inviting them to do to live a life of character, to live a life of faith is very hard.
And we shouldn't always just be talking at them about, well, this is the right thing. So you've got to do this. This is worth your doing.
Yes, that's true. And we are trying to convey that. But also I know how hard it is. It's hard for me to. And I am with you in this.
You are not alone. That to me is the most important thing. It sounds so simple, but so many of us are missing it. I'm an educator.
I'm around young people all the time. One of the biggest things that good parents are not recognizing is how alone their children feel, even in relation to them, their parents. And so to see this as another call, another opportunity to go back and recognize our children need us more than we realize.
They need us to be present to them, to deepen this relationship, to just be willing to be there with them, to talk these things through with them while we're being intentional about informing them to be different. Wow. Thank you very much. What a great word of encouragement for parents. Let's talk about some of those specifics. Then in your most recent article, you say there is a pervasive presence of social media, disordered music and banal, if not noxious games and entertainment. This is a quote. And there is the loss of civility and manners as well as of ordinary wholesome pastimes, end quote. But certainly not all social media is bad.
Not all music and online games are bad. So how do parents go about day to day trying to define what is different in a good way and what is just not necessary? This is the question and there is no easy answer to it. But I start by saying this. First of all, if we're blessed to be in a marriage where we can work on this together with our spouse, this is precisely what's going to draw us closer together. This is what we're going to speak about together. This is what we're going to pray about together. This is what we're going to focus on together, trying to answer precisely this question.
So already it's going to be a gift to the marriage. We're going to get ourselves up and say we were made for this. We can do this. We're going to go back to our basic principles. We're going to go back to our faith and we're going to recognize we got to meditate upon this. We're going to pray about this. Begin with the principle of the end is the starting point, the goal.
What is the goal? And we need to have a very clear conception of the kind of person that we're trying to form our children to be. And we need to be able to imagine and go through and think of what are the different especially character traits? What are the ways that are going to relate to people?
And this includes things such as manners, civility. It includes the kinds of pastime. How are they going to work? What's their work ethic going to be like? How are they going to entertain themselves? Do they have a sense of leisure?
Do they have a sense of real leisure? OK, where are they going to get this from? They're going to get especially from in the home. And so we're going to take a positive attitude here. It's not just keeping out the bad. It's building in the good. We're going to make a home culture that is full of life. This is where it's at today.
This is the center point. We need homes that are vibrant and alive and happy. And the only way they can be vibrant, alive and happy is that the parents are invested in them and making it be real and making it be real and very simple, ordinary, traditional down home, physically present ways. And children turn to social media and banal video games and on and on and go in the room and close the door and listen to music if there's not other things going on. We need to invest.
It's going to be hard for us, challenging for us. But this is what parenting is about. We're going to have to look at our own priorities and recognize, regardless of what we wanted to be doing, this is what our children need to be doing. It's what we need together as a family to do these positive kind of activities where we can be teaching them their social skills, passing on civility and all these other rich things. I'm assuming it's never too late. What kind of advice do you have for people who maybe feel like they've blown it? I say what you say.
It is never too late. Today is the first day of the rest of our life. It sounds trite. This is simply true.
It is also profoundly Christian to me there, especially if I can make the faith appeal. I'd say turn to the Lord, make this an object of prayer, conversion. This is a time for turning. We're going to begin right now.
It's a waste of time to look to the past and mope over the past. We're going to right now start to build in a richer life. This is what God designed us for. This is always in our power by his grace.
We ask for his assistance. We turn to those around us because we do need people around us. This is part of the reason it's so difficult for our children to feel different. We don't want them to be different for the sake of being different. We only form them to be different when they need to be different from dominant bad things. Ultimately, we want them to be the same as people that are seeking after the things that God made us for because we're made for community.
Community requires a certain kind of sameness. Ultimately, we're raising them to be the same in a good sense with many other great people who are trying to respond. If this is a new point of insight for us, then this is a moment of grace. This is a moment of, oh my goodness, this is a gift. This is being given to all of us, whether it's early, late.
It's all a gift from God. Wherever we are, we start from here. We can do better by ourselves. We can do better by our spouses. We can do better by our children to try to live that life that God wants us to have more abundantly. All right. Well, we are just about out of time for people who are out there listening and they're like, oh, yes, I need to know more about this.
Where can they go? Website life-craft.org. We also have a podcast, The Intentional Household. All right. Well, what a pleasure. Thank you, Dr. John Cutaback. Thank you for being with us today. Thank you for listening to Family Policy Matters.
If you enjoyed this episode, please subscribe to the show and leave us a review. To learn more about NC Family and the work we do to promote and preserve faith and family in North Carolina, visit our website at ncfamily.org. That's ncfamily.org. And check us out on social media at NC Family Policy. Thanks, and may God bless you and your family.
