On a recent episode of his “Interesting Times” podcast, New York Times opinion columnist Ross Douthat interviewed Yale law and history professor Samuel Moyn.
One particular clip from the episode has gone wildly viral. In it, Moyn suggests that minors should have some stake in elections because decisions about the future impact them. But since the law prohibits their casting votes, another eligible class should be charged with casting those votes on their behalf.
But his most shocking claim came next.
When Douthat inquired about the parents of children being the ones to cast those additional votes, Moyn argued against the idea.
His reasoning? Parents aren’t the best ones to determine what’s in their kids’ best interest.
“Because there’s a divergence of interests between parents and children. And I think it’s likelier that young people — not people who are raising families — will have the best insight into the interests of children,” Moyn said.
“I think parents generally confuse the interests of their family with the interests of their children. Part of our goal, I think, as parents, but also as a society, is trying to make sure that children aren’t the hostages of their parents,” he added.
On this episode of “Live Free,” BlazeTV host and Lakepointe Church Pastor Josh Howerton exposes not only what he sees as the spiritual danger behind Moyn’s words but also how popular this toxic ideology has become in our current culture.
Moyn’s belief that what’s in children’s best interest cannot be determined by their parents, Howerton says, is “emblematic of thinking that is far more prevalent and far more influential in our culture than people realize.”
Moyn, he explains, is not some “fringe” thinker. “This is the person that’s training the most prominent legal minds in our nation,” he points out.
Moyn’s proposal to shift the proxy voting power for children away from parents and give it to young adults is the “demonic reverse image of Malachi 4:6,” says Howerton.
“Malachi 4:6 says that what the Spirit of God does ... is He turns the hearts of the children to the fathers and the fathers to the children. What unholy spirits do is they turn the hearts of the fathers against the children and the hearts of the children against the fathers,” he explains.
The three main “streams of progressivism” push this spiritually toxic ideology, says Howerton.
He then explains how each goes about poisoning the minds of kids against their parents:
Critical theory teaches children to “see their parents as racist oppressors that they have to oppose in order to stand on the side of justice”; queer theory “disciples kids to see their parents’ views on gender, marriage, and sexuality as bigoted and repressive, so they have to rebel against their parents to ‘be themselves”’; and hyper-therapy culture “disciples children to see their family of origin ... as the source of every problem that they ever have, so they have to go no-contact or separate from their parents to be happy.”
All three of these streams are specifically “designed to reverse-disciple children to turn the hearts of children against the fathers,” says Howerton.
Moyn’s proposal is simply “a fourth way” to do this, he argues.
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The American dad has spent the last 40 years serving as the culture’s favorite punching bag.
From the misanthropic, couch-locked Al Bundy in "Married... with Children" to the bumbling, well-meaning hazard-to-himself Phil Dunphy in "Modern Family," Hollywood conditioned us to view fathers as overgrown teenagers.
The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data.
They were the morons who couldn't find the milk in an open fridge even after moving everything except the milk, the slow-witted domestic saboteurs who would accidentally incinerate the kitchen if left unattended for 20 minutes.
For decades, the consensus was clear: Men were biologically, or perhaps pathologically, unfit for adult responsibility.
Then came the modern panic over falling birth rates, and the blame was promptly dumped at the feet of these cinematic man-children. Women, the conventional wisdom claimed, were refusing to breed because men refused to grow up. If only dads would stop playing video games, put on pants, and learn how to operate a vacuum, fertility rates would soar.
It's a convenient narrative. The only problem is that it happens to be wrong. A recent report from the Institute for Family Studies dismantles it entirely. The myth of the detached, useless dad is officially dead.
Far from dodging domestic duties, modern American fathers are putting in an enormous amount of time at home.
In the mid-1960s, a married father with young children spent fewer than 10 hours per week on household chores and child care combined. Never mind the all the other hours spent earning the money to put a roof overhead and food on the table — the average dad had a reputation for being terminally checked out, loafing through family life behind the sports pages.
That stereotype is now hopelessly out of date. Today, married fathers spend close to 30 hours per week on household chores and child care. In little more than half a century, paternal involvement has tripled.
Meanwhile, appliances evolved. Washing machines, dishwashers, and robot vacuums eliminated the soul-destroying physical labor of the past, reducing the hours required to maintain a home. But instead of using that freed-up time to drink scotch in a recliner, the modern father rolled up his sleeves and absorbed the extra hours.
Married fathers now spend roughly 45 hours per week directly in the presence of their kids. In other words, dad isn't just providing a paycheck any more. This is a man wearing half a dozen hats: chauffeur, soccer coach, homework warden, amateur therapist, technology troubleshooter, and occasional short-order cook. He is expected to be present for every bedtime routine, school recital, and emotional wobble.
The most shocking revelation from the IFS report comes when you look at the total workload. When researchers tallied up paid employment, unpaid labor, child care, and household obligations, they discovered something remarkable. Today, married mothers and married fathers of young children each average roughly 63 hours per week of combined labor.
The massive domestic imbalance that has inspired a million angry think pieces is virtually nonexistent in the data. Both parents are working long, exhausting hours. Both are making massive personal sacrifices.
This completely flips the fertility debate on its head. If fathers are already maxed out, increasing paternal participation isn't the magic cure for declining birth rates. More importantly, it tears up the old script that men can't be trusted with a grocery list, let alone a young child.
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However, this hyper-involved, positive picture of modern fatherhood does come with an important caveat: the rise of over-parenting. In the past, parents let their children wander the neighborhood until the streetlights came on — partly out of trust and partly because they just wanted them out of their sight.
Today, children are rarely left unsupervised. Teenagers spend less time with friends, neighborhoods are less connected than they once were, and parents increasingly feel obliged to schedule every waking minute of their children's lives. What used to be an afternoon of "go outside and be home by dinner" now requires a color-coded calendar.
This total elimination of childhood freedom has created a new kind of claustrophobic family dynamic. By bubble-wrapping their offspring, modern dads are inadvertently raising a generation of anxious, hyper-dependent kids who can't make a decision without a text thread consultation.
Furthermore, this extreme devotion has exacted a heavy toll on men's mental health. Time is finite. Every hour spent curating a child's resume or driving to a travel-team baseball game in another state is an hour stolen from personal maintenance. There are only so many hours in a day. Increasingly, fathers have paid for their expanded responsibilities with their own leisure, hobbies, and friendships. The modern dad has sacrificed his own social survival network on the altar of family responsibility.
Despite the dangers of helicopter parenting, the overarching reality is shifting toward something undeniably positive. American fathers didn’t shy away from changing social expectations. If anything, they adapted with remarkable speed. If the old model of fatherhood was largely financial, the new model demands presence, participation, and constant engagement. And, as the report shows, millions of fathers have embraced it.
So this Father's Day, if you're lucky enough to still have one, thank your dad. And if you've spent years insisting fathers don't show up, don't care, or don't pull their weight, the evidence suggests you might owe him an apology as well.
On the North Norfolk coast, dawn is more sensory than visual.
Sea lavender and samphire engulf you before the bite of the wind reminds you of nature’s power. As the sun rises above the horizon, my father and I cross the salt marshes, the light revealing tidal creeks winding through the mudflats. This time, though, I know it is our last trip together.
In angling, the tippet is the thinnest section of line, the point most likely to fail.
Every step is taken with the knowledge that these rituals — these early mornings, the scent of salt and wildflowers, the quiet companionship — are being performed for the final time.
This is not just a landscape but a stage on which the story of my family unfolds. Each tradition echoes those who came before and those still to come. This place, and these shared customs repeated year after year, have woven our family history together — each visit another stitch in a tapestry stretched across generations.
There is no better place for solitude than Stiffkey, an idyllic village nestled in the Norfolk countryside. For miles around, the only sounds are wood pigeons cooing in the trees and the distant thunder of the sea. It is still very early — five in the morning — when we break this peace with the rhythmic punch of a shovel digging into saturated sand. My father and I do not speak as we work. Ours is a silence filled with meaning, a language shaped by years of tradition and respect for the world around us.
The rhythm of these mornings — the shared labor, the quiet companionship — blurs the boundaries between past and present, between father and son, creating a continuous thread running through my memory. Growing up, my father and I mainly communicated through the tension of a fishing line. Our family has never been big on talking; we are like frayed strings, bound and spliced together by tradition.
In the modern world, silence between two men is often treated as a void to be filled with noise. But on this stretch of coastline, silence is a form of stewardship. To be quiet is to respect the natural world. To be quiet together is to acknowledge a bond that does not require speech.
Here time folds in on itself — my father’s footsteps merging with his father’s, and mine with both of theirs.
My father brought us to Stiffkey every year for our family holiday. For decades, this was his parish. He moved through the shifting terrain with the confidence of a man who knew the tide’s schedule like the back of his hand.
This time, watching him navigate the narrow ravines in the soft morning light, I see not the man who first guided me to the water 20 years earlier but his shadow. His light has dimmed — but it is still bright enough to guide us.
The lessons of Stiffkey are as much about patience, respect, and inheritance as they are about fishing. Each action — from digging bait to laying lines — forms a thread in the fabric of our shared history.
Laying fishing lines is a skill. The tide’s timing and direction determine how the lines must be slanted to catch fish. Digging your own bait matters too; no competent angler wants to carry unnecessary weight from home.
You take only what you need, while respecting the land and sea. From an early age, this was the lesson my father taught me: We are merely guardians, entrusted with care until it is time to pass things on.
“The ragworms aren’t biting,” I would tell him. He would approach with his antalgic gait, quietly move my shovel a few feet, and say, softly but with conviction, “Dig between the holes — that’s where they live.” Ten minutes later, the plastic bucket would overflow.
These moments bridge generations, passing down not just skill but belonging. This was where my grandfather taught my father to fish. Decades later, my father stood here teaching me.
A disused sewage pipe stretches northward, its end disappearing beneath the waves of the North Sea, marked only by a lone orange buoy. With an upturned wooden rake slung over my shoulder, its worn teeth piercing an old onion sack, I would walk the length of the pipeline. I can still feel the chill of rusted metal beneath my bare feet and my father’s watchful eyes — stern yet generous — urging me on. Together we raked the mudflats for cockles, the famed “Stiffkey blues,” once plentiful, now sought like hidden treasure.
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Every sensory detail — the cold pipeline, the mudflats, the weight of the rake — anchors memory to place, making past and present inseparable.
Trust and love, learned in my father’s shadow, now guide me as I support him. The cycle of care turns gently but inexorably.
My father's name is Peter. As his name suggests, he was always my rock — my moral guide — and I followed him with a child’s absolute confidence. Now the roles have quietly reversed. I lead; he leans on my shoulder.
The symbolism of the tippet — its fragility and strength — mirrors this transfer of responsibility. In angling, the tippet is the thinnest section of line, the point most likely to fail. As I watch my father struggle with the nylon — his hands, calloused by 50 years of labor, unable to tie the hook — it becomes clear that we are in the tippet phase of our relationship.
I take over, tying a grinner knot. He has taught me this a thousand times, but today feels different. As I pull the knot tight, I feel the weight of his legacy. He is handing over the keys to his kingdom.
At daybreak the following morning, we set off with the same excitement I once felt as a 5-year-old. His unspoken lesson had always been that disappointment should be met with patience. Then there it is: a solitary bass, glistening in the early sun. His hands tremble as he holds it up, smiling. On the walk back to the car, we laugh as seagulls swoop in, trying to steal our catch.
As our roles shifted, so did my understanding. Fishing became a meditation on acceptance, mortality, and shared silence. Fishing with a dying father reminds you that life is finite. It shows that the boundary between this world and the next is as thin as a fishing line — fragile, transparent, yet strong enough to bear the weight of a soul.
Even after loss, the rituals persist. Each return to Stiffkey is both goodbye and renewal. The year after his death, I returned to scatter his ashes. As the wind carried him out to sea, I understood that life’s true tippet strength is not measured by where it breaks but by what it can hold before it does.
Denying God’s fatherhood, motivated by a misplaced affinity for diversity and inclusion, or perhaps a deep feeling of pain from our own broken or non-existent relationship with our fathers, results in the unintended byproduct of further disconnecting us from the fact that we all need fathers.
The social taboo against questioning how disillusioned men presented themselves may have helped keep child abuse unreported.
The furious reaction to two simple sentences reveals just how much effort has gone into teaching Americans to reject the most basic fact of human existence: every child comes from one mother and one father.
The 'trans dad' cartoon op-ed is a reminder that the legacy media have a sneering disdain for real fathers — and reality.
Sometimes the greatest blessings come wrapped in the things we were once most afraid of.
There is one prevailing factor that actually predicts poverty, crime, academic failure, and dependence on government: Growing up without a father in the home.
Through a legal doctrine known as 'intent-based parenthood,' you no longer become a parent by creating a child.
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