Because I Said So!
Putting the ‘Man’ Back in Manhood
Whatever happened to good rock 'n' roll is also what happened to manhood, apparently.
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Parenting With Love and Leadership
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Whatever happened to good rock 'n' roll is also what happened to manhood, apparently.
ParentGuru: Better Parenting Starts HereThousands of stressed parents are finding their way to better parenting with the help of ParentGuru.
Parenting With Love and Leadership
Weekly Substack newsletter by Parenting Expert John Rosemond.
Disclaimer: This post contains affiliate links. If you make a purchase, I may receive a commission at no extra cost to you.
Thanks for listening! Subscribe to my newsletter and follow me on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.
You got yourself some children. They all be running wild, driving you crazy. They're keeping you up all night long. You better turn on your radio, dial up to John Goldman's show Because I said so.
Speaker 1:Well, hello out there and welcome or welcome back, as the case may be, to Because I Said so which is the only podcast on the entire worldwide web where you will hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, about psychology and America's mental health industry in more general terms. And remember, I am licensed by the North Carolina Psychology Board, duly licensed since 1979. And I am a psychologist, I'm one of them and I see the profession from the inside, so to speak, and I know that it is rotten from the inside out. Anyway, you will hear the truth about America's mental health industry from me, your host, john Rosemond, or, as I sometimes refer to myself with only half my tongue in my cheek, johnny Too Bad Rosemond. And anyway, welcome, welcome. I'm going to see if you know your American history fairly well. I'm just going to ask you one question here. The one question is what is the greatest invention America ever came up with? What is America's greatest invention? Keep that in mind. We'll return to that theme in a few moments.
Speaker 1:Anyway, I was saying you'll hear the truth about America's mental health industry and you'll also hear the truth about children, which the mental health industry in America will not tell you, believe it or not. And because they won't, we no longer understand what children are all about. And you'll also hear the truth, the old truth, about what is now in America called parenting. Oh, I say it all the time, praise the Lord, I was not parented. I mean, I watch what's going on today and it's like. You know, I'm 76 years old. I'm a member of the last generation of American children who were raised by people who understood what they were doing and had a sense of the big picture in mind. What people my age see going on on the so-called parenting stage in America today is just I mean, it's just mind-blowing. To a person my age it really is. I understand it because I've spent my entire professional career studying it and, believe me, it takes an entire professional career to understand it. It's that complex, convoluted and insane. Anyway, this episode in this ongoing podcast series is going to be about a variety of things, the first of which concerns my ongoing musical education, but I almost forgot to apologize for the fact that I have been missing in action for about three weeks, and the reason for that, folks, is we have been having technical difficulties and we still have not figured them out. I record this podcast atop Rosemond Towers in New Bern, north Carolina, and then I ship the file by way of the internet to Charlotte, north Carolina, where it is produced. And we've been having great difficulties with the audio glitches in the audio and we don't know whether those glitches are happening in the studio or in production, and so we hope that we have this worked out, and we hope, and therefore I am recording today. So, anyway, this episode is going to begin with a comment or two about my ongoing musical education.
Speaker 1:I've been a student of rock and roll since I was a youngster. Many of my regular listeners know that I played in a working rock and roll band. That's a thing that occurred in somebody's basement every few weeks occurred in somebody's basement every few weeks. But I was a member of a working rock and roll band for seven years during college, graduate school, supported my family for a few years playing rock and roll and recorded a full album of original music, music written by yours truly in 1992, which got good reviews, by the way, and I was invited to tour behind it, but I was already touring as a parenting expert and so I could not do that. But anyway, I've been a student of rock and roll since I was a youngster.
Speaker 1:I remember very clearly when I first heard Elvis, which was the first time I'd ever heard rock and roll music. I was having lunch with my mother in a small diner in Hillside Illinois One of those old fashioned diners that had a small jute box in every booth and a song began playing. And, mind you, my mother and stepfather only played classical music. I mean, they didn't even play Sinatra or Tony Bennett. All they played was classical music, and so I had never heard popular music, much less rock and roll. The song Elvis was singing was Don't Be Cruel. I was eight years old. It was the summer of what year would that have been? Let me do some quick math in my head it was the summer. Well, it was the summer before I started fourth grade. Elvis the pre-army Elvis not the imposter that came out of the army singing mostly cheesy songs and starring in even more cheesy movies, he changed my life At that very moment. In that diner in Hillside Illinois, on Roosevelt Road. Elvis changed my life. He put rock and roll into my brain and I haven't been able to get it out since.
Speaker 1:68 years later, I know a lot about rock and roll. I know a lot about blues, going back to Robert Johnson, and I know a lot about 1950s, 1960s and early 1970s rhythm and blues. You know the real stuff, not the stuff they're calling rhythm and blues today. I mean, I know a lot about post-1940s. I guess it would be music, which might indicate, by the way, how much time I've wasted in my life.
Speaker 1:A fellow about my age once challenged me to a rock and roll trivia duel. He bragged that no one had ever beaten him. I beat him on his first question, which was who played congas on Welcome to the Canteen? Who played congas on Welcome to the Canteen? How many of you out there know the answer to this? Anyway, the guy was. You know, he was all puffed up. He said nobody's ever, ever been able to answer this question and the rule of this duel was the first person who couldn't answer a question correctly lost and we flipped to see who went first. He went first. Who played Conga's on Welcome to the Canteen? Most people don't even know it's an album by Traffic. Traffic featured Stevie Wynwood on keyboards, guitar and vocals, and anyway, I looked at him and said, well, everybody knows it was, I'm not going to tell you, look it up.
Speaker 1:So I was surfing music videos on YouTube the other day it's a favorite pastime of mine and I heard a song I had never heard before, a song that completely blew me away. The song's title Pilot of the Airways by Charlie Dorre. I've also heard it pronounced Dor-ay D-O-R-E, with one of those little squiggles above the E Pilot of the Airways by Charlie Dorre and her crack band, released in 1979. I am still wondering how this song passed me by for 45 years. It is as perfect a song as I have ever heard in my life. The chords are perfect, the chord changes are perfect, the blend of instruments is perfect, the rhythm is perfect, the lyrics are perfect. Charlie Doré's voice is perfect. I've now become a Charlie Doré groupie. By the way, I now begin my day. Charlie is a female. By the way, my day, charlie is a female. By the way, I now begin my day every day with listening to Pilot of the Airways. Yeah, pilot of the Airways.
Speaker 1:If you look it up, watch it on YouTube. Watch. There's several versions. Watch the version where Charlie's wearing a pinkish top, white slacks and has a white scarf hanging around her neck. It looks like a live performance. I doubt it's live, but it looks like a live performance and it is just fabulous.
Speaker 1:I've also been obsessively watching the official music video which is a live performance, which is kind of unusual for official music videos of Fleetwood Mac doing Dreams. Now, all right, I'm going to tell you this in a moment. This song, this video, I now understand. You know, when I first saw this thing, I thought well, you know what an unusual thing for the official music video to be a live performance. But I watched this live performance of Dreams and folks. It may be Stevie Nicks' best vocal performance ever. It completely revised my opinion of her. I mean, I thought she was a lot of flash and not much else, but she in fact is a great vocalist Nonetheless.
Speaker 1:The original Fleetwood Mac formed eight years before Rumors was released. The Fleetwood Mac led by Peter Green who wrote Tick Tock Black Magic Woman, who most people think is a Santana song. Santana ripped it off of Fleetwood Mac. It is a Peter Green song. He ripped it off note for note. The original Fleetwood Mac continues to be my favorite Fleetwood Mac lineup. In that regard, I highly recommend anyone who is interested in pursuing this, recommend anyone who is interested in pursuing this, the album Then Play On, which is the Mac's greatest album ever. Better than anything the Lindsey Buckingham Stevie Nicks version of Fleetwood Mac ever did.
Speaker 1:Finally, during the same OCD session yes, I do have OCD, but I maintain no successful person has ever has not had OCD. Ocd is essential to success in whatever field. Anyway, during the same OCD session, I stumbled across the best duet performance I have ever heard. I'm not generally a fan of duets, but this one it just blew me away. I watched it over and over and over again. It was so good.
Speaker 1:Kenny rogers and dolly parton trivia question what band did kenny rogers first sing in tiktok, tiktok first edition, and dolly parton doing islands in the stream live during some award show? Is Dolly the greatest female vocalist of two generations or what I mean the woman is? I mean she's got it all. She is the epitome of sublime and she is doing nothing during this song but having a good time. Nothing during this song, but having a good time. And Kenny ever the gentleman lets her steal the show effortlessly. So in one two-hour episode of Music, ocd. The perfect song, three perfect vocal performances. How could I have asked for more? It was supernatural, folks here.
Speaker 1:I am a certified old man and new stuff just keeps happening in my life. I vow to keep on rocking the free world as long as I am capable, which brings me back to my original challenge question what is America's greatest invention? America's greatest invention is freedom, liberty, the free world. The free world was a world created by America's founding fathers. There was no free world until the late 1700s. There was no free society ever in history until the late 1700s. Freedom started here in America. I don't think young people today have any appreciation for the significance of that. We can thank our public school system for that. Anyway, the free world is shrinking and has been since the Berlin Wall came down, case in point. That's very ironic and case in point.
Speaker 1:Biden and the democratic party party elite showed their true colors the other day by putting a moratorium on shipments of vital arms to israel as it tries to secure its future as a legitimate nation state. The very institution that created Israel, the United Nations, is now trying to destroy it, and America is, and the Democrat Party. It is part of this collusion. I mean, it is just, it's embarrassing. It should be embarrassing to all true, authentic Americans. I mean, if Israel caves in to this blackmail which I doubt is going to happen, which I doubt is going to happen the mullahs are going to know that the timing of Israel's destruction is completely up to them. Israel must stand. The free world depends upon it, upon it.
Speaker 1:We baby boomers started the craziness. We grew up during a time when the country was as unified as it's been since the revolution and then decided that, being the best country the world had ever known, the country that people from all over the world were risking their lives to get into, was not only not good enough, we decided America was actually in need of a complete cultural overhaul, which the Democratic Party has been trying to engineer ever since then. Our generation, the boomers we should be called the we-know-better generation we boomers became infatuated with new ideas, including new ideas concerning the raising of children. We opened the Pandora's box of parenting progressivism and out came the problems today's parents are experiencing with children, problems that would have been inconceivable to my parents, their peers and their four parents.
Speaker 1:I have great difficulty remembering what I did yesterday, folks, but I recall my childhood quite well. I do not remember ever seeing another child throw a tantrum. I don't remember ever seeing a child openly defy an adult instruction. I don't remember a female high school classmate creating and then wrapping herself in a personal soap opera. I do not remember a high school peer, male or female, going about in a near constant state of angst. Going about in a near constant state of angst.
Speaker 1:The collapse of child rearing is a symptom of the collapse of values that defined what it meant to be an American, until certain misled individuals in my generation took the helm of the ship of state and ran it aground with malicious intent. The authoritarians want you to believe they represent freedom, when the truth is they represent oppression. By any means necessary, they want to tell you what you can do and can't do, what you can say and not say even what you will think down to the iota. If we don't figure out how we got to this place, folks, we are going to wake up one morning to find that the American experiment is over and the tyrants have begun their reign. The solution begins with the self-restoration the self-restoration of males to their rightful places as responsible leaders of their households. Two generations ago, the American family began turning into a matriarchy, which is its general state today. Child-rearing the process of transforming the unruly, self-centered, proto-sociopathic toddler into a functional citizen, is the most important of all.
Speaker 1:The 1970s, in response to their demonization by the left, including the mainstream media, men began retreating from authentic masculinity and accepted the lie that women can do anything men can do, and equally well. That is a lie. When God created us, male and female, he endowed each of the sexes with unique abilities that foster compatibility. The new left, embodied now in the Democrat party, would have us believe in the myth of equality, a myth that fosters not compatibility but competition between male and female. The myth of equality there's no difference between men and women, except you know biological features. The myth of equality is behind the rise in homosexuality and the transgender movement.
Speaker 1:Listen, folks, if male and female are no different, if they're interchangeable, then they become arbitrary and subjective matters of choice. Hey, you lack a penis, but you'd like to pretend you're a man? Or you have a penis but want to pretend you're pregnant? Hey, no problem, dude or dudetta. Problem, dude or dudetta. Rock on you bad self, like public schools and parents. Tell these kids today you can be anything you want to be. Why would we think children wouldn't take that literally? So as men retreated from leadership, women became CEOs in both the workplace and the home. Men came to believe the press about themselves that they had obtained power unfairly through intimidation in various forms, that we were all P Diddy's, you know, and were then hypnotized into believing that righting their historical wrongs against women required letting women take over. It was reparations time.
Speaker 1:In the American home, this transition of leadership, if that's what you want to call it in the home was paralleled by the rise of the professional parenting expert who, like yours truly, usually held mental health credentials of one sort or another. These new parenting pied pipers defined good parenting parenting, the new word for raising children according to bogus psychological theory. The new parenting Pied Pipers defined good parenting as properly understanding and properly responding to the undisciplined emotions of the child. Now, this is an extremely important concept, folks. I'm going to say it again. These new parenting pied pipers, almost all of whom held mental health credentials of one sort or another, defined good parenting their new word for raising children according to bogus never proven, still never proven psychological theory as properly understanding and properly responding to the undisciplined emotions of the child Because women generally are more oriented toward the emotional than men. It's not a criticism, it's a fact. Women generally are more oriented toward the emotional than men. Women concluded they were best suited to executing the new parenting thing in accord with the new psychological prescription which boiled down to quote you shall inquire about, listen to and talk with your child about his or her emotions at least three times a day in perpetuity, always remembering that all emotions are equally valid. End quote.
Speaker 1:In that regard, the operative rule which Head in the Cloud's mental health professionals are generally unwilling to accept is quote the more one talks to a child about his feelings, the more feelings said child will have. End quote. That is a fact, that is not a theory. We will never hear this fact from anyone else in the mental health professions. I'll say it again the more one talks to a child about his feelings, the more feelings the child will have. I mean I would come home when I was a kid. See, this is the sort of thing we've lost folks. We've just lost the common sense of stuff like this, the story I'm about to tell you, because we have been listening to head in the clouds mental health people for 55 years. It is time we stopped doing that. Here it is again. The more one talks to a child about his feelings, the more feelings he will have.
Speaker 1:I would come home when I was a kid bawling about something that had happened on the playground or you know the sandlot or wherever, and my mother would say what in the world is wrong with you? And I would tell her you know they won't throw the ball to me or something. And I mean all she would say half the time when I would come home emoting about something is oh, john Roseman, you're making a mountain out of a molehill. I don't have time for foolishness of this sort. Go find something to do, parents. They just they cannot bring themselves to say something along those lines to their child in a similar situation.
Speaker 1:Okay so emotions folks don't misunderstand me Emotions properly controlled, properly expressed, properly restrained, they enhance a human life. But undisciplined emotional expression is destructive. Undisciplined emotional expression damages and even destroys things. It damages and destroys relationships. It damages and destroys marriages. It damages and destroys even the people from whom those undisciplined emotional expressions emanate. Anyway, as anyone with a functional brain would have known, as parents began talking to their children about their feelings and helping them, name their feelings and all this stuff. Children began having feelings, and lots of them.
Speaker 1:The results of this social experiment are in and they are conclusive. The post-1960s rise of mother-managed psychological parenting has accompanied a tenfold deterioration in child mental health. Now there are some women out there right now who are going Ooh, I'm not listening to this any longer. This man is a sexist brute, he's bullying us over the airways. No, just keep listening, will you? I'm going to explain all this as I go along as a group.
Speaker 1:Compared with the generally emotionally resilient kids of the boomer generation, my generation and prior generations, today's kids are a mental health train wreck. One in 10 kids ages 5 through 17 is taking a psychiatric drug of one sort or another, is taking a psychiatric drug of one sort or another, none of which have reliably outperformed placebos in controlled clinical trials and all of which involve the possibility of dangerous, even life-threatening, side effects. And, mind you, the mental health of America's children has deteriorated drastically as the availability of child and teen mental health services has increased exponentially. Will someone please tell me what good these people are doing? Okay, okay, am I saying that mothers are primarily to blame for the decline in child and teen mental health? No, but I will tell you that with their micromanaging, their enabling and their orientation toward the emotional, women have played a largely detrimental role.
Speaker 1:But just as Adam was responsible for what occurred in the Garden of Eden, even though Eve took the first bite, the buck of responsibility for America's parenting problems stops with men, men, men who have failed to step up to the plate and take primary responsibility for the health and welfare of their families.
Speaker 1:America's mental health professional community is also to blame for engaging in deceptive business practices, specifically for promoting an approach to the raising of children based on untested psychological theories that has proven upon testing to be wrong and even destructive. And yet said mental health industry keeps right on promoting it. The solution to America's child-rearing woes is for the marriage to be restored at the center, at the heart of the American family, and for women to hand over the final word in child-rearing matters to their husbands. God clearly intended for men to be the heads of their families, and it is high time we stopped arguing with him, thinking we have a better idea and that, folks, is a wrap. Thanks for joining me for another exciting trip down Parenthood Parkway. I hope you'll continue to tune in every week and even tell your friends, neighbors, relatives and, yes, even the ones who infuriate you, your co-workers and even the guy who mows your lawn about us. And, as always, until we meet again, keep on rockin' the free world, folks, because when we stop rockin' it, we're gonna lose it.
