It’s Time to Restore the Strong Father

As noted in a previous essay, America is being “decivilized.” How can we change that? By restoring the idea of the Strong Father to our culture. Good paternal leadership sets things right, so it’s time to put the Strong Father back in charge.

The Strong Father represents order and authority.

The Strong Father is an ancient archetype, expressed in forms such as the Egyptian god Ra, the Norse god Odin, and the Christian God the Father. He represents order and authority, which are necessary for people to live well in civilized societies.

The Strong Father is also a presence, in the form of men who provide order and hold authority within their families and communities. He is essential to human thriving, and the societies that acknowledge this are the ones that are thriving today.

One society that acknowledges this is Russia. According to Western observers who spend a lot of time there, its people are confident, happy, and optimistic. That’s because it honors the Strong Father. Men occupy the vast majority of leadership positions in Russia, and its society is so patriarchal that the official title of its top spiritual leader is Patriarch.

That’s not to say that women in Russia are relegated to domestic roles. Leadership positions there are open to women of talent, which is why the governor of Russia’s central bank is a woman, and women hold around 20% of its parliamentary seats.

Nonetheless, Russian society remains based on the paternal role of the Strong Father. For example, when Russia’s president declared 2024 to be the Year of the Family, he did it to promote the traditional roles of Strong Father and Caring Mother, marked by what he called “your father’s advice and guidance, your mother’s all-embracing love.”

The Strong Father provides good leadership.

Any society is only as good as its leaders, and masculine men who exemplify the Strong Father are naturally-wired to be good leaders. These men, such as Army officer Richard Winters portrayed in the TV series Band of Brothers, exhibit the masculine qualities of structure, strength, and independence.

It’s these qualities that comprise the essence of leadership:

• Structure: Providing structure is the most important thing a leader does. It gives the group he leads a solid foundation of support. The people he leads are reassured when he sets and enforces healthy boundaries.
• Strength: A good leader needs a strong character, and a strong will. The first impels him to do the right thing, the second enables him to get it done. A strong leader who faces difficulties with fortitude inspires confidence.
• Independence: All leaders are confronted by challenge from without, and by dissent from within. The good ones are independent enough to stand alone and make the best decision, no matter what pressure others apply.

Warfare is a bad thing that develops good leaders. It’s no coincidence that after World War II, when the United States was led by its returning wartime leaders, it entered a golden age of prosperity and achievement. A thriving society was built by a generation of strong, structured, independent men who exemplified the Strong Father.

Mainstream culture attacks the Strong Father.

These days, mainstream American culture attacks the Strong Father. Instead of depicting fathers as strong and capable, its media portray fathers as weak and incompetent, using kids’ shows and sitcoms to promote the “dumb dad” stereotype.

At the same time the mainstream culture is attacking the Strong Father, it’s grooming women to take his role. While portraying the Caring Mother as a hapless sellout, its media pound out what one critic calls “The Message:” the notion that women should be tough and aggressive, forsake the joys of home and hearth, and pursue positions of power and authority.

Many women have taken that message to heart, and because they’re pushed into positions of authority in accordance with woke ideology, they now manage many of our social systems. These masculinized women have been taught that they must supplant the Strong Father, because the idea of paternal authority is inherently Bad.

In these women, we see the worst of both genders: the touchy belligerence of the insecure man, and the Mean Girls maneuvering of the insecure woman. Women such as Victoria Nuland and Annalena Baerbock exemplify this sort of woman. They scheme to start wars, but don’t understand how they’re waged, and as a result get lots of people killed.

The replacement of the Strong Father is also killing education. I see this in our local schools, which, in the 1960s and 70s, were run exclusively by men. Those men were mostly ex-jocks who provided good paternal leadership, and the schools they ran were some of the best in the nation. Now those same schools are run mostly by women who have educational credentials but lack leadership ability. Consequently, three out of four students here can’t pass their graduation tests.

The Strong Father is like the top dog at the dog park: a calm, quiet leader. The women who’ve been induced to take his role in schools tend to be the opposite: agitated, talky rule-followers. That’s why most of the teachers I know say they don’t like working for female principals, and that they’d much prefer having a man in charge.

The Devouring Mother is eating our children.

The Strong Father is not only being replaced in public life, he’s being removed from families. Consequently, instead of being protected by a Strong Father, many kids are now harmed by the Devouring Mother.

The Devouring Mother is a woman who’s estranged from real love. She has never formed a solid and lasting relationship with a man, which leaves her feeling instinctually insecure. Because of that, she works to emotionally cripple her children. That way, she subconsciously thinks, they can never leave her, and she will never be alone.

The Devouring Mother has been around for at least a century, since she was identified by the psychologist Carl Jung. She has proliferated in contemporary America because:

1. Most marriages in America now end in divorce, and most of those divorces are high-confict. This means that parents end up in family court, where fathers can be stripped of their rights and denied access to their children.
2. Most family court judges are masculinized women who, like most professionals these days, adhere to a woke ideology that’s hostile to fatherhood. This means that fathers almost always lose in court. When that happens, they often get replaced by the Devouring Mother.

Removing the Strong Father from families has generated a tidal wave of malign motherhood. It has also started a self-perpetuating cycle of family dysfunction:

• In depriving boys of a good paternal role model, and keeping them weak and dependent, the Devouring Mother sets them up to become weak or absent fathers.
  
• In denying girls a strong paternal presence, and making them anxious and insecure, the Devouring Mother sets them up to become terrible mothers in turn.

The Strong Father appreciates the Feminine.

In contrast to mainstream culture, which insists upon shoehorning women into masculine roles, the Strong Father appreciates the Feminine.

When a situation requires the feminine qualities of flow, relationship, and sensitivity in abundance, the Strong Father looks to a feminine woman to provide them. Within his family, that means the Caring Mother. Outside his family, that means a female advisor. He recognizes that the Feminine is just as powerful as the Masculine, and that women are naturally-suited to channel its power in insightful ways.

King Philip of Macedon, a good example of the Strong Father, sought female advice when he went to the Oracle at Delphi and asked how he could secure his kingdom. Using her feminine intuition, the oracle divined his situation and told him, “With silver spears you may conquer the world.” He figured out what she meant, captured some silver mines, then used the proceeds to bribe his way to victories over Macedon’s enemies.

What contributed more to his kingdom’s success, his leadership, or her advice? It’s a trick question: both were essential. The Strong Father knows that, and forms complementary relationships with highly-feminine women who can do what he cannot.

We must train men to be Strong Fathers.

We’ve seen what happens when we remove the Strong Father from society: we get chaos, dysfunction, failure. That’s neither sustainable nor desirable, so the question facing us now is: how do we restore the Strong Father, as an idea and a presence?

First, we’ll have to train men to be Strong Fathers. We’re 200 years into the Industrial Revolution that took fathers away from their families, 100 years into the economic changes that upended traditional gender roles, and 50 years into the cultural changes that have masculinized women and feminized men. This means that most men today don’t have any firsthand knowledge of what a Strong Father looks and acts like.

To bring men up to speed on how to be a Strong Father, we must start when they’re boys. That means initiating them into manhood. Male initiation is of primal importance, in that it gets boys thinking and acting like men, and gives them the confidence to become Strong Fathers later in life.

Next, we must teach young men how to lead a woman. A man should lead a woman in a relationship as he leads her on the dance floor: by providing a secure frame, staying attuned to her signals, and adjusting his lead accordingly. To make a good marriage, a young man must know how to do that.

Before they become fathers, young men must also be taught how to lead a family. Specifically, they must be taught how to set and enforce healthy boundaries, provide discipline, and create an orderly home environment.

Let’s put the Strong Father back in charge.

After men have proven themselves to be good husbands and fathers, they can lead in a wider sphere, applying their Strong Father skills and sensibilities in positions of public service.

It’s in public office that the Strong Father can do the most good, providing paternal leadership to set things right in our society:

• Setting and enforcing healthy boundaries.
  It’s no accident that American culture began coarsening soon after the Hays Code was scrapped in 1968. The Strong Father in government can establish similar guidelines today, so kids see only good examples online.
• Working in concert with “mom.”
  The feminized professions of law and education need to change if they’re to serve us well. The Strong Father in government can ensure that masculine men can rise according to their ability to leadership roles within them.
• Creating a structured “home” environment.
  The American ruling class’ policy of illegally importing vast numbers of migrants is damaging our social fabric. The Strong Father in government can stop this, then help legal immigrants assimilate into the common culture.

The Strong Father’s time has come again.

For generations, the Strong Father has been prevented from fulfilling his proper role as a source of benevolent authority. His time, however, has come again. His power meets fundamental human needs, so it will not be denied.

Although there aren’t many Strong Fathers left in America, many are not needed. It will take only a few of them to spark a revival of masculine virtue that creates many more. One Strong Father, the Catholic Archbishop John Ireland, knew that when he wrote:

“The need…today…is of men among men who can rise higher, who can see further, who can strive more nobly than others. They need not be many. They never were many. But, though the few, they will rise, and bring with them the whole of humanity.”