My father is a great man. I’ve always said how grateful I am for his influence, guidance, example. But mostly, I am thankful for his presence.
The only thing I took really seriously in high school was wrestling, and I had dreams of wrestling in college. Dad would get me up to run, attend every match, and he even “coached” me a few times at independent tournaments, despite not having much knowledge of the sport on a technical level. My senior year, I entered the lower state tournament ranked number one in our half of the state. The top four wrestlers in that tournament would go into an eight man bracket at the state championships two weeks later. I had qualified the year before, and was wrestling year round in preparation.
My first match, I competed against a guy I had never seen before. He was strong, in a purple singlet representing his school, and ready for a dog fight that I wasn’t expecting. At the end of regulation, the score was 1-1, and I had basically done nothing but fight for my life up until that point. Overtime came, no score. Double overtime passed and we were both sucking wind. In triple overtime, sudden death, the guy scores, and I fall flat on my face. A loss here meant I had to win five in a row the next day just to make it to the top eight in the state.
I ran out of the gym and laid down on my back in the hallway of a school I had never been to. I stared at the ceiling until my dad found me. I cried. I was tired, and angry, but mostly tired. It sounds odd, but this was the worst thing that had happened to me up until that point. It was a crushing realization that I just wasn’t good enough to compete the way that I wanted, to be the best.
But he was there, my dad. And eventually he peeled me off the floor. We didn’t talk much over the next 24 hours, but he was there. He was there the next day when I wrestled the best I ever had. He was there when I wrestled the same kid who had beat me in the first round for third place. He nodded and clapped encouragement as I turned that match into a brawl, taking out all my frustration. He was there for the ride home and the dinner and the state tournament after that.
The ministry of presence was what my father provided. The ministry of being there in highs and lows.
The evidence seems clear. America has the highest rate of single parent households of all nations, with the vast majority of those homes being single-mother households. 40 percent of children are born to single mothers, with that number increasing to over 50 percent when the mother is under 30.
The data shows that children from fatherless homes struggle with mental health at a much higher rate than their counterparts in nuclear households, leading to higher rates of suicidality. Fatherless families have higher rates of poverty. Affected children have much higher rates of drug abuse. They are twice as likely to drop out high school. A vast majority youths in prison come from fatherless homes, most of these being men. Boys without fathers are far more likely to go to prison and more likely to exhibit violent behavior.
What happens when young men grow up without the ministry of presence from a father? They look for fathers where they can find them. Social media has allowed for perfectly packaged father icons to emerge and gain popularity. The process is self-evident.
Kid has no father around. Kid finds someone on YouTube or TikTok who says things that resonate. Kid idolizes personality. Personality becomes father figure.
This figure is inherently false, for one of two reasons, but that often doesn’t matter. Because the damage is alreadydone by absence, pseudo-fatherhood is enough to drive the attention, obedience, and even worship of the pseudo-son.
I anticipate some objections to the commentary that follows. Some will ask, Aren’t you making implicit statements about alternative lifestyles and parenting, particularly homosexual couples with kids? No, I don’t think so. My scope is limited to single parent, absentee father situations, because the data bears those out without commenting much on the others. I think two loving parents who provide stability is the best way of moving forward for all households. And I laude anyone who fits the bill, because from the outside looking in, it seems like a difficult job. Simply put, this isn’t the data set I am looking at, and I think every household with two adults working their tails off to provide love and guidance to kids is of great value.
Why aren’t you addressing socioeconomic, cultural, labor, and race factors that make up a complicated picture of why fatherlessness remains prevalent? Because I am not writing about why? Only about a particular phenomenon that emerges when it does.
You’re focused on young boys. What about girls who grow up without a father? To that I would say, the data is clear about this as well, that girls without fathers in the home are more at risk than their counterparts across multiple variables of analysis. But, I think it’s different for boys, because they drive to emulate their father’s every move. Plus, I was a little boy, so I am only writing what I understand to be true.
Doesn’t this analysis diminish the efforts of single mothers? Certainly not. I know many people who grew up in that kind of home, and they became great men and husbands and fathers despite their lack of an example. Still, the statistics are what they are.
And finally, What about single father households? This seems like an unnecessary diversion. Statistically speaking, as opposed to anecdotally, it is fathers who are leaving. Trying to muddy the waters with the “some women leave too” rhetoric feels like a copout.
So boys affected by their fatherlessness seek out fathers online, and there are many available to choose from, though some have a better marketing strategy than others. These are what I term “false-fathers,” and I think there are two categories with which to divide these social media gurus.
In superhero movies, the anti-hero character does some good, but often lacks the moral framework to fully engage in rational, exemplary behavior. We understand them, but we don’t admire them.
The first kind of false father is the same. He tells young men half-truths, but robs them of a true moral center. The questions boys naturally ask are for a father, and when they don’t have one, they often find answers in the form of half-truths told by grifters and curated images.
Who do boys look to for guidance on relationships when they don’t have a model in the home? They might look to someone like Andrew Tate, who takes traditional gender roles and turns them into the ultimate power hierarchy, a way to exercise dominance. A man who believes that it is the male right to sleep with as many women as possible, while demanding women be pure. Who disdains the marriage relationship but also demands that men become protectors, capable of stepping into dangerous situations. He is an amalgamation of moral bankruptcy and half-truths.
Who do boys without fathers look to when they want to know how to be strong, brave, physically healthy and capable? Possibly the Liver King, who teaches acolytes about the unmatched benefits of healthy living and exercise. The same influencer who secretly nursed a five-digit-a-month steroid habit despite telling lies for years about being “natty.”
The second kind of false father is more interesting, and far more helpful. These false fathers are not so obviously morally dilapidated. In fact, they may even be vital to a generation of men raised without examples. Who do young men look to when they want to gain an understanding of the world, or become motivated to be the kind of men who grow to be strong, brave, helpful, compassionate, wise, etc. Jordan B. Peterson. Or Jocko. Or David Goggins. Or Bishop Baron. Or Sam Harris. Or Joe Rogan.
I say again, these may be of net benefit. But they remain false not because they are morally bankrupt or hypocritical. There is a clear line of division between Bishop Baron and Andrew Tate, thank God. But they cannot, by nature of their work as influencers and commentators and online motivators, form the fatherhood relationship with their viewers. So young men seek to model themselves after someone they can’t ever really know.
If Tate and the Liver King are false because of their moral deficiency, the others are false because they have been forced to play a role for a generation that they cannot play. Their listeners transcend obedience to their instruction, helpful as it might be, into something like worship. After all, don’t most young men worship their fathers if they have them?
When we worship those with whom we can never enter into relationship, their flaws become invisible, and we are disappointed when we cannot measure up to what we see. Even their vulnerability seems like an unattainable feature of their persona.
I do not mean to belittle their influence. There will be men who have seen Jocko’s posts of a 4:30am wakeup call who lose weight and live longer lives in support of their families. Who read Peterson’s books and begin to set their lives in order, who even make a decision to stand with their family instead of perpetuating a cycle of abandonment. If these are consequences of the phenomenon, then we should count it as a blessing.
Nonetheless, when I am fighting with my wife, I can’t call Joe Rogan. When I struggle with finances I can’t get a response from Gary Vaynerchuk. I can from my father. The danger of the second type of false father, is that we trade the benefits of good instructors for the ministry of presence.
We do this with the dead too. I once knew a guy who was hopelessly devoted to Marcus Aurelius and his meditations. Not simply for wisdom, but as a more-than-teacher. When the pains of life came, he found that the consumption of wisdom, while it gave him a foundation, was not enough to guide him through the pains of life. We need teachers, dead and alive, but we need fathers more than that. There is no substitute for relationship.
What then shall we do? We can start by dispensing with the first kind of false-father, the one who plays in the shadows of truth but cannot embrace it.
Then we can readjust our positioning of teachers as fathers, not to diminish them, but to put them in their proper place.
We can seek out real relationship. “Mentor” used to be a helpful word. A moment of relationship, of a modeled life of responsibility and order, is worth a hundred moments spent scouring YouTube lectures. There are some who will find this step difficult, but it is vital. Without relationship, the lessons of a father are not really learned. They are the math tutor we try to recreate when our children ask for help on their homework. Fleeting memories and fuzzy understanding of the way things should be, but hard to explain without a reference point.
This means, by consequence, that men who are capable should become those kinds of mentors and friends that provide relationship. Provide counsel and example. That live honest and decent lives to be examined and imitated. When young men find their false-fathers to be morally corrupt, the results can be catastrophic. When young men make false fathers out of good teachers, the results are incomplete. When young men find relationship and guidance, the results are reparative. The ministry of presence may be the thing that liberates my generation from the vicious cycle of fatherlessness. The abdicated responsibility can only be repaired through an active reclamation of relationship.
A true father knows that to demand your children, spouse, friends do something that you won’t do is not a system that lasts long in relationship. A false father monetizes hypocrisy.
A true father models the value of others over self, and knows that advocating personal involvement in the dominance and destruction of the female psyche while claiming to be a protector is, well, evil. A false father teaches men that if you can dominate, it means that you should.
A true father teaches a son to have a capacity for protection that is dangerous to any who pose harm to those whom he loves, but a false father teaches a son to actually be the danger.
A true father is present when their son lies flat on his back, dreams destroyed, and peels him off the floor to fight again tomorrow. A false father is one who says all the right things, but cannot be there.
False fathers are often destructive. Or absent, as a consequence of existing only in the online realm. A true father is there, and that makes all the difference.
Beautiful article, thank you! You are lucky to have the father you do. No matter the make-up of the household, two parents are better than one. Being a single parent is damn hard. And, alone, it’s impossible to be all that you need to be for your children. A single perspective, and a singular effort, is never enough. We need mothers and fathers, mothers and mothers, fathers and fathers, grandparents, elders, aunts, uncles and cousins. It’s important to have many people in the upbringing of a child, a generation.