If we aren’t careful. If we aren’t intentional. We lose the chance to frame the conversation about fatherhood, the conversation about being a parent. If we don’t have those conversations on purpose, we let the next generation learn by accident. And given the state of masculinity in 21st Century America, that’s not a risk I’m willing to take.
And this comes at a time when we need to be asking new questions about masculinity. Well, overdue questions finally breaking through in today’s America. The public face of what it means to be a man, the public face of masculinity at this moment, is one of aggression, of violence, of abdication of moral responsibility, of the minimizing women’s voices, of concern for perpetrators of degradation while ignoring the impact on those who suffer…this is not the masculinity I want to raise my son into.
