New Rule: Bring Back Trad Dads | Real Time with Bill Maher
And finally, New Rule: this Father's Day, if you really want to give your father something he'll treasure forever, give him permission to be a dad like dads used to be.
And before you start in with, "But Bill, what do you know about it? You're not a parent." Yeah, I don't give blowjobs either, but I can tell when someone is doing it wrong. How about that? So, no, I don't have kids, but I sit next to yours at restaurants.
I see parents in stores kowtowing to brats like they're congressmen groveling before Trump. I've seen a seven-year-old ram a shopping cart into someone's coccyx and the parent just shrugs and gives a look like, kids… what are you gonna do? Raise them right. That's what you can do.
For as long as I've had a television show, the issue of parents overindulging their children has been a topic of discussion. So, it's not like it's new, but it hasn't gotten better either. We were talking about trophy syndrome in 1993, and then it was helicopter parenting, and then bulldozer parenting. And now we have gentle parenting, or as it used to be known, negotiating with terrorists.
British author Sarah Ockwell Smith, who coined the term, said, "The key here really is thinking, 'Would I like it if someone did this to me?' If the answer is 'no,' then why would you do it to your child?" Because they're a child? Would I like it if someone stripped me naked and plopped me down in a tub of water? No, but with a kid, that's just bath time.
I keep hearing how parenting is so hard these days. Yeah, because you're making it hard. Gentle parenting. It's like a Taco Bell breakfast. The reason it feels wrong is because it is. And it's ruining lives on both sides of the equation. Parents, it's ruining your lives because you've made yourselves a butler to a five-year-old.
And the kids, because the results are in. And all this letting the kids run the show, path of least resistance, child rearing, is harming them. The average high school kid today has the same level of anxiety as the average psychiatric patient in the early 1950s. A recent survey of employers found that about one in five recent college graduates brought their parents with them to a job interview. Our kids are crippled with anxiety because they haven't been properly prepared for a world that doesn't revolve around them.
Almost ten percent of college students claim to have PTSD. From college? The cradle of safetyism? The home of safe spaces and trigger warnings and policing offensive words? You're not supposed to get PTSD in college. You're supposed to get an STD.
The National Institutes of Health says that roughly half of teenagers now have a mental health disorder at some point in their lives. Which tells me one thing, the National Institutes of Health is also part of the problem.
The mental health disorder is on the part of the adults, not the children, the adults, who forgot that to a child, discipline is love, and that kids need structure and authority. Of course, they think they have traumatic stress disorder when they get to college, if before they left the house, they never heard the word "No." Never heard, "You're wrong." Never heard, "Wait, wait."
A lot of life is waiting, yeah. Waiting for your boss to recognize your worth. Waiting for love to bloom. Waiting for your career to take off. Waiting for your partner to be finished in the bathroom. Waiting for your porn to download, for your vape to charge. For the drugs to kick in. For your eyebrows to grow back after you do something stupid on drugs. It's vital you learn as a kid how much of life is going to be waiting.
And boundaries. Jesus, yes, boundaries. Sex dolls set more boundaries than today's parents. This is why the traditional dad, the trad dad, needs to make a comeback. Not all the way back to the 1950s psychopath who never said he loved you and hit you with a belt, no. But just back to the dad who believes that "Because I said so" is a perfectly legitimate answer to any question a child may have. Just back to the dad who would never say anything as stupid as, "My kid is my hero." Or, "Where do you want to eat dinner?" Or, "One more story and then we really have to start thinking about going to bed, okay?"
Trad dads don't negotiate. They say, "You will apologize to your mother, don't make me turn this car around, some things just happen because life is unfair, clean your room, be quiet, the adults are talking, and it's not all about you." Mostly, a trad dad knows he's your parent, not your friend. "Hey, buddy" isn't in his vocabulary. He isn't your emotional support animal. He's simply a guy who understands the job to raise an adult who can survive in the wild.
There's a long-running TV show in Japan called Old Enough, where parents send children as young as two on errands by themselves. Sometimes the kids cry, and sometimes they come home with the wrong stuff, but that's okay. That's how you learn. Meanwhile, in this country, parents strap leashes to their kids like they're escorting a serial killer on Con Air. And children are constantly tracked like they're the last surviving albino tiger instead of just another white kid named Liam.
But what happens, what always happens when uber-liberal bullshit goes too far, is it produces a far more damaging counter-reaction. In the absence of traditional fathers, teenage boys these days are turning to meathead misogynist influencers like Andrew Tate. Ever heard of him? Well, your kid has. He's popular with teenage boys because when we don't give them a masculine male role model they look up to, they go out and find one. And being teenage boys, of course, it's going to be the worst possible one.
Andrew Tate is a man who answers the question, "What if Axe Body Spray could talk?" He's so anti-woman, I don't think he even has a mother. I think he was born when lightning struck a jug of protein powder. And now he's your teenage son's favorite thinker. Did I mention he's a big Trump fan?
So, this Father's Day, let's give dear old dad the gift of being dear old dad. And also, shut up. He's trying to watch the game.
