Admittedly, Elon Seems Like A Terrible Dad
Elon kept teasing some seismic sitdown with perpetually-aggrieved big thinker Jordan Petersen the other day, and then they finally dropped it on Twitter, and here it is with some context:
The big “reveal” in this interview is that Elon had — yes, had — to buy Twitter because he was so pissed at “the left,” since they “trans’ed” his child. If you are unfamilar with the story, Elon had a son named “Xavier” who appeared to transition to “Vivien,” but part of the reason was how much he/she hated her/his father.
This is such an insane take to me. I might be biased or misguided, sure, but if you have billions of dollars and you feel your kid slipping away into a different gender via the amorphous blob known as “the left,” couldn’t you cancel a few meetings or stop flying to World Cup games and talk to your kid? Couldn’t you be a parent, ya know? It seems like that would be better than buying a company financed heavily with debt.
Now, of course the real reason he bought Twitter was to “own the libs” and be a free speech champion in the Culture Wars. He didn’t buy it because of trans kids. He bought it for money, legacy, and social dominance. I get it.
It’s funny because that’s an interesting intersection point. My friend John, who has two young kids, periodically bemoans how “legacy” really comes from work (for men) and not from family. Obviously, you have a legacy to your family, but your broader legacy in the world tends to be external, i.e. through work.
Elon resides right at this intersection. He has 10 kids, although I believe two of them are sperm he donated to an IVF process. He has 1–2 kids who don’t speak to him. He doesn’t seem to be a good father from afar, and why would he be? He’s a cultural warrior + biz guy + flies around a lot + might be a drug addict, or at least a low-level one.
One thing I’ve never understood in my own looks at parenting and infertility and who gets “over the hill” is that a lot of people seem to outsource parenting. They had these kids, and while they’re financially responsible for them (well, most of the time), they tend to outsource the actual raising and disciplining of them to:
If your kid wants to become a different gender and you don’t want them to switch genders, that’s a moment to have a conversation. If you need to change your own perspective, so be it. If they need to change theirs, so be it. But that is all part of being a parent. You can’t just “blame the left” or “buy a company.” Those don’t fix your parenting flaws, ya know?
What’s your take?