If you're wondering where I've been...

I have been working on a long piece - call it a manifesto on fatherhood - I expect to publish as an Amazon pamphlet.

So much news lately: the fight over the Hepatitis B vaccine; the killings of Rob and Michelle Reiner, apparently by their drug-addled son….

And I haven’t written about any of it.

This is partly because I have been traveling a lot; I am now in Phoenix for the Turning Point USA annual conference, where I am debating cannabis (yes, still against it). It’s the first big TPUSA event since Charlie Kirk was assassinated, and I’m honored to speak. Charlie also understood the drug’s appeal to young men — and its dangers. I will do my best to make his case.

But it’s also because I have been writing a long discussion and defense of fatherhood that I expect to publish soon as a pamphlet, ala the Unreported Truths booklets.

The piece is several thousand words long and part manifesto, part advice column: what it means to be a father and how to be a better father. Having to defend fatherhood seems bizarre, yet we have reached that point. For decades, cultural elites have attacked men and masculinity, attacks that come in many forms, including on fathers — who are endlessly portrayed in Hollywood and academia as simply less competent mothers.

On X yesterday, Elon Musk reposted a long discussion on the havoc that diversity initiatives have wreaked on young men. I see the attacks on fathers as a cousin of that, and in their own way equally pernicious.

But I don’t just want to complain about the way fathers are portrayed, I want to offer men specific advice on how to be better dads.

Why should anyone listen to me? That’s a fair question, which I try to answer in the piece. But in any case the advice — and the philosophy driving it — will have to speak for itself. Sometimes the only way to see if an idea can fly is to set it into the world, and this feels like one of those times.

The opening of the piece (which I reserve the right to edit) is below. I’ll probably post the entire first section — the vision of fatherhood I’m trying to articulate, and why it matters — on here when it’s ready. (The actual advice will only be in the pamphlet - I have to give people SOME reason to buy it.)

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(Unreported Truths — about fatherhood, and everything else.)

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Fatherhood is underrated.

The American liberal elite loves portraying fathers as clueless, or worse. I will confess I am not sure what drives this impulse, but the stereotyping starts practically at birth: I remember reading the Berenstain Bears series with my kids. In every book, hardworking, practical Mama ran the house. She cooked, cleaned, took care of the cubs. Potbellied, entitled, dopey Papa got in the way.

I was surprised how unsubtle the message was. I shouldn’t have been. Father Knows Best is long gone. For decades, if not generations, movies, television shows, and advertisements have stereotyped fathers as goofy, hapless fools who depend on their superhero wives to pay the bills and take care of the kids.

Meanwhile, feminist academics crank out endless research claiming fathers coast in married households where both parents work. None of those papers has any relationship to the reality I have seen up close in the middle- and upper-middle-class suburban and urban families I know. In those two-parent homes, child care is split more or less equally. Occasionally, when fathers are the primary wage earners, they get a slight break. But the same split occurs in reverse when women make more.

Of course, our cultural elites do busy themselves with a second stereotype of fatherhood: the emotionally distant blue-collar dad who hardly notices his daughters and whose interest in his sons begins and ends with their ability to put a perfect spiral into double coverage. If the white-collar father is a fool who tries but fails to share the parenting burden, his blue-collar counterpart ignores his responsibilities entirely.

Throughout academia, Hollywood, and the media, the only good dad is a feminized “gentle parent” who never raises his voice, is always ready with a hug, and never lets his kid take a risk or get hurt.

In other words, the only good dad is a mom.

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These lies – and they are lies – have real consequences. They discourage men from becoming fathers. And they discourage fathers from becoming the kind of fathers they want to and can be.

During Covid, I became known for speaking out against the liberal orthodoxy that demanded endless lockdowns and school closures. Those choices sacrificed the long-term mental and physical health of kids and families on the altar of feel-good and irrational (and, yes, feminized) risk prevention. I wrote what I called the “Unreported Truths” pamphlets about Covid. I wanted to encourage people, particularly those living blue states, to stand up against governmental overreach and media-driven fear.

This pamphlet comes from a similar impulse. There are many, many books about being a mom – or books about parenting that are really about being a mom. There are far fewer about being a dad.

I hope to speak for a practical, no-nonsense style of fathering – not parenting, fathering – that has been under attack for far too long. To be clear, in this pamphlet I am drawing on my own experience and biases rather than any scientific research. I am writing what is essentially an advice column, not a peer-reviewed paper. I don’t have a PhD in gender studies or sociology, though I am familiar with some of the gentle parenting nonsense. I am not a therapist or psychologist. As a statistician would say, I am drawing on an “N of 1.” (Or maybe an N of 3, since I have three kids.) I am not pretending otherwise. The advice that follows is idiosyncratic and personal and covers points small and large.

Two further warnings: my oldest child is only 13, so I cannot know if what I am saying applies to older teens. Maybe I’ll update this booklet in a decade or so, assuming my kids and I have avoided disaster. Similarly, none of my kids are autistic or otherwise developmentally delayed; I do not have any idea of what it’s like to parent a kid with special needs.

But when it comes to child-rearing, an N of 1 is all most of us will ever have. If you are already a dad, your family is also an N of 1. You bought this book looking for advice, for a voice you didn’t hear elsewhere. Maybe my worldview will resonate with you. Maybe not. Maybe you will find my suggestions obvious, or irrelevant to your family and kids, or just plain foolish.

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(Or maybe not.)

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But at the least, I hope they help you think about your own fathering style, what works and what doesn’t for you and your family. Think of them as the candid words you wished your friend with four kids had given you over a beer when you told him you were expecting.

And if you aren’t already a dad, I hope this pamphlet makes you want to become one. Being a father is awesome. It is uniquely fulfilling in a way that cannot be described, only lived.