Key Advice For Fathers in Today's Feminized Culture

I love the idea of this, and I love the advice in this. So what made you write this? Why did you think this was necessary? I mean, it's amazing to me that it is necessary to write something like this. But as I say in the beginning, this is sort of a two-part booklet. And the first part is a philosophical defense of fatherhood. And again, it's stunning to me that anyone needs to say this. But really, for the last 30, 40 years, I mean, you can almost trace it back maybe to The Simpsons, Married With Children. We've engaged culturally on the left, but I would say even more broadly than that, in a devaluation of fatherhood, of traditional masculinity, of structured parenting. And we've really, listen, moms are the center of a household. But we have feminized parenting, I think, in a way that leaves almost no room for fathers. I have three kids. And I think at some point, I was like, where is there something positive that I'm seeing in the culture about being a dad? And I didn't see anything. And I thought, you know what? I should write this. Yes. Honestly, when I grew up, we watched Little House on the Prairie and The Waltons nonstop. And while they're kind of cute and a little hokey by now, but they had strong father figures, you know? Charles Ingalls. Even something like The Cosby Show, right? I mean, from the 80s, right? But that's been gone really since then. So why do you say that fatherhood has been feminized? Well, so I think that, you know, so this is a broader issue. And one of the things about The Fatherhood Manifesto is the tips. Some of them are really specifically, I think, for dads, but some of them can apply to fathers and mothers. And the longest tip in the whole book is reject gentle parenting, right? And so gentle parenting is this idea, essentially, that parents and children are completely equal. And that, you know, you can never just tell your kids what to do. You can never just say, hey, you're going to clean up your room. I'm not telling you why you have to do this. I'm not negotiating with you about this. I'm not sparing your feelings about this. You are just going to do this. And it's because I say so. Because I'm the dad. Because I work hard to, you know, make money for this family and to provide for this family and to protect you. And that's good enough. That's enough. And, you know, mothers work hard and provide as well. But, you know, I think that we have an expectation sometimes that mothers will be more nurturing, more gentle. And, you know, that's a different role. But when we take away the authority role that I think that a father should have, we undercut him and give him sort of nothing to do. He then just becomes a lesser mom. But so the gentle parenting, to me, that applies to both mothers and fathers. But it's even more important to say no to that if you're a dad. Mm-hmm. Like, we all have our moments of, like, just do it. Just do it. But you're saying... I'm saying that's okay. Yeah, it's okay. I'm saying there's a chain of command. In fact, it's better than the alternative of explaining everything and getting buy-in and negotiating. It's like, do it now. That's right. Life is not just one exercise in self-actualization. Sometimes, to be successful in the world, you have to do things you don't want to do, you don't like to do. Everybody has responsibilities that they just have to do. And that's true. You know, that's a large part of what school, you know, is or should be. Because, I mean, look, obviously, you need to learn, you know, a lot of facts. You need to learn how to think. You also need to learn how to behave and sometimes just to take instruction and orders. And that is an important part of parenting. And it's certainly an important part of being a dad. Very good point. You write that, I believe fatherhood is a fundamentally conservative act. And I believe our cultural unwillingness to admit that has harmed our kids, especially our boys. What do you mean by the use of the conservative there? So conservative in, not in a political sense, in a cultural sense, right? What we've just been talking about, in a sense of there is an order in a family. And when the order is, you know what, we're all just equals here. And, you know, we're going to have negotiations and discussions about everything. That order breaks down, right? And that isn't good for kids. It's not good for boys in particular. But it's not good for either side. And I do think that when, by undercutting sort of traditional masculinity, there's been a lot of talk in the last few years about, you know, sort of this hyper, this hyper masculine influencers who are out there, you know, essentially treating women like trash, encouraging, you know, boys and young men to treat women like trash. That's a terrible thing. That shouldn't be happening. I think you can draw a pretty clear line, though, from undercutting, you know, men who just want a parent, who just want to be able to say, I am the dad here. And the rise of those hyper masculine or, you know, they're almost parodic, right? They're almost parodies of men, as I say, in the fatherhood manifesto. You reveal in the book that you are relatively recently divorced and that you have custody of your kids and you're a very active father. Obviously, you've got custody of them. But you also have thoughts on fighting with your spouse in the children's presence. So talk to us as a divorced dad about that, because if you're recently divorced, that must have been a challenge. If you don't want to fight in front of the children, you're heading to divorce, there's going to be some arguments. Yes. And so, by the way, my ex-wife is also, you know, she's very involved with our kids. And so I don't want to make it sound like she is not. But and I don't go into any details in the book about my divorce. I don't think that's really appropriate. I don't think it's really and it's certainly not the point of the book. But what I will say is and what I do say in the book is you shouldn't fight in front of your kids. And fighting in front of your kids is a really bad sign for your marriage. And you really should do everything you can to avoid doing that. And if and the number one thing is you shouldn't fight about your kid in front of your kids, because that, you know, that first of all, it encourages in some cases, you know, older children to triangulate, to try to start fights so they can get what they want. And it's very unstable. And it's, you know, if you can't figure that out, you have to seriously think about getting divorced, I think. And and so, as I say in the book, I'm not the person to ask for marital advice. I'm not pretending to be that person. The reason I even mentioned my status is I do think, you know, I think obviously if I'm writing about fatherhood, people are going to wonder, you know, what my relationship with my wife or in this case, my ex-wife might be. And also because I have had a lot of time, you know, alone with my kids in the last several years. I think it's brought some of the stuff up for me. And and by the way, I don't think that you should just tell your kids what to do all the time. I don't think you should order them around all the time. What I think is that if you have earned respect as a father, you you will have a relationship with your kids that's good, that can include them sometimes making fun of you, you know, like, but but ultimately, they respect you. And it's and you can talk about stuff and you can make decisions together sometimes. But in the end, your word goes. You're you know, this is this is an infantry company and you're the captain. And so, you know, you can get advice from your first sergeant and and, you know, think about things. But in the end, someone has to be responsible. And that someone is the father. Yeah, Doug and I live by these same principles. And we we don't fight often at all. Honestly, like, I feel like once a year, if that we just we don't have a lot of disagreements because we address everything every day with each other. But we did have one fight one time that our youngest heard, which I didn't actually know that he heard. And he cried after. I'm sorry. It was such a good reminder, like, oh, my God, never do that. Like, make sure if you're having an argument, your kids are not there. And I will tell you, I've been vigilant about that. We don't fight a lot. But if we ever like if Doug ever does anything that even annoys me in front of the kids, especially if it's about the kids, I hold my tongue until we can get into private to say, like, don't do that in front of them or don't say that. And it's just marriage. Of course, you're going to have little things where you're like, what'd you do that for? Or what'd you say that for? But they have enough to worry about. They definitely don't want to have to worry about mom and dad fighting, possibly divorcing, because that's where a kid's mind goes every time they see a fight. And you need to be a united front about them, too. If they've done something like and you and your spouse disagree with how to handle it, that needs to happen behind closed doors and not in front of the child. I agree with you wholeheartedly. Thanks for watching this clip. If you're new here, subscribe. We got a whole lot more goodness where that came from. Would love to hear your feedback. You can email me to Megan, M-E-G-Y-N at MeganKelley.com or just leave a comment below. But join the community by becoming a subscriber. We really, really value your input and your support. 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