If you spend much time reading right-leaning content, you’ll eventually find advice for fathers on how they should raise their children. The Left has gone to truly insane lengths to raise the sense of self importance in young men and women such that they are no longer living in reality. Since a “conservative” in 2022 is someone who holds most of the leftist worldview but is stuck in an older variant, we see a sort of 1950’s Dad presented as the right answer to the problems our children face.

When I use the term “1950’s Dad”, I’m not referring to anyone in particular. It’s merely a useful stereotype. Substitute whatever makes more sense to you. I use it mostly because this era is appealed to as a golden age. While much better than the mess we have now, it’s not what we should be aspiring to. There are better things.

The 1950’s dad, as I use the term, is stoic, unemotional, focused on business, and has little time for childhood imposing on him. His children need to grow up. They need to stop bothering him and go out and make something of themselves. He’ll be proud of them – it’s not that he’s unkind or unloving – but they can expect little help. His money is his and his time is money.

Most recently, I encountered the 1950’s Dad response to the question “what do you do if your son asks you for money?” The response? Obviously, work for it. Get a job. Are you eight or nine or ten? You’re old enough to go shovel driveways and mow yards.

I’m not here to suggest that all work is bad for children, or that children should be discouraged from earning money, and I also have no interest in forming a moral equivalence between the Left and Right; conservatives are, in virtually every subject, the superior to their leftist counterparts and often by a margin the size of the Grand Canyon.

Still, there’s a parallel problem going on here between Left and Right. The Left steals childhood innocence and forces children out of their childhoods early to corrupt them. But note here that the response of the Right is to also force children out of childhood – and even out of the home – to go work for someone else away from family.

The real problem with the 1950’s dad, though, is that he’s first and foremost not following the pattern of our God, our ultimate Father. God gives to His children out of abundance.

… if God so clothes the grass of the field, which today is alive and tomorrow is thrown into the oven, will he not much more clothe you, O men of little faith?

Matthew 6:25-34

“Ask, and it will be given you; seek, and you will find; knock, and it will be opened to you. For every one who asks receives, and he who seeks finds, and to him who knocks it will be opened. Or what man of you, if his son asks him for bread, will give him a stone? Or if he asks for a fish, will give him a serpent? If you then, who are evil, know how to give good gifts to your children, how much more will your Father who is in heaven give good things to those who ask him!

Matthew 7:7-11

Every good thing given and every perfect gift is from above, coming down from the Father of lights, with whom there is no variation or shifting shadow.

James 1:17

He who did not spare His own Son, but delivered Him over for us all, how will He not also with Him freely give us all things?

Romans 8:32

The passage from Matthew 7 is particularly stark here, because the assumption is that even evil men give generously to their children. This is explicitly used to contrast God and good fathers more generally who give even more. We see the example of the Prodigal Son as well, who is given his inheritance and then, when he repents of his sin, is given even more. What do you think the 1950’s Dad would do?

There’s a reason families are broken today, why children hate their parents, why children move away from their homes, why there’s little community anywhere, why extended family is a thing of the past. That reason largely comes down to a lack of real fathers. I’m not pinning all the blame on men alone; the state has encouraged a lot of this, women have begged for the dissolution of technology of marriage which they once realized was a benefit to them, and men are attacked constantly simply for being what they are.

However, none of this stops fatherlessness from wounding children, and none of it is an excuse for us. I have several children, and while I see a great threat to them coming from the Satanic rainbow mafia and their hellish perversity, I know that I can fail myself to be a good father to my children and push them away all on my own. I need to be generous, I need to be loving, and I need my children to know I’m not raising them up so they can leave and never come back; I’m investing my life into them. They are my legacy. I believe their lives are the chief good work God has given me to do, and I would rather make half as much money and spend more time.

Raising children means doing more than giving your children things. It means at times having them work for things. It means discipline. But all of this should be done in generosity and love. The risk we run with the 1950’s Dad model is that we see spoiling children as the only danger. The fact is, it’s not hard to keep a child from being spoiled or coddled. It’s much harder to avoid making your child feel like he’s a burden, unwanted, or unloved. Mothers may have a hard time avoiding spoiling their children, but for father’s it’s the opposite. You don’t want your children to grow up and think of you as their first unappreciative and hard-to-please boss. You want them to always see you as their loving father.