The High-Five Dad

The first time I was a guest on the Dennis Prager Show, Dennis opened the interview by asking, “So, John, you don’t believe fathers should high-five their children. What’s that all about?”

Dennis didn’t disagree with me, by the way. He was merely doing what talk-show hosts do. And I did what guests on talk shows do, or are supposed to do. I was magnificently eloquent, if I do say so myself.

I said, “Right. High-fiving is a demonstration of respect, admiration, and affirmation that should be reserved for peers. Today’s parents treat their children as if they are peers and then turn around and want those same children to obey them. What’s THAT all about?”

Dennis told me that my position on high-fiving was not going to win me many dad-fans, which I realized before I went public with my parenting heresy, but I didn’t care. I have been a controversial figure for decades and I welcome controversy. If engaged in with intellectual honesty, it sharpens people’s critical thinking abilities, mine included.

Dads high-fiving children – and yes, some mothers do it, too, and I am equally disapproving – is symptomatic of a bigger problem, or bigger problems, plural.

First, it is symptomatic of the post-1960s desire on the part of parents – especially dads – to be their children’s best buddies. The “buddy-dad” and the “high-five dad” are one and the same. In 1996, David Blankenhorn published one of the most compelling and prophetic social commentaries of our time: Fatherless America – Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem. He said that the growing phenomenon of the fatherless home was going to haunt America in the years to come, and it has.

But Blankenhorn also said that the left’s attack on traditional masculinity had worked and as a result, many if not most two-parent homes were, effectively, two-mommy homes, the paradox being that one of the mommies had male genitalia and chest hair. Blankenhorn meant that traditional fatherhood was disappearing as men capitulated to anti-male propaganda and did their best to “feminize” themselves. In the home, the feminization took the form of dads whose goal was to be sensitive to their children’s supposed emotional needs, to be nurturing as opposed to looming large. As a consequence, many if not most two-parent homes were absent authentic male role models.

Blankenhorn’s book came and went, but the problems he prophetically described did not and have only exacerbated since.

Dads who put nurturing in front of holding their children accountable and accepting the role of primary disciplinarian – neither of which, by the way, are incompatible with unconditional love (see Proverbs 3:12) – are acting contrary to their nature and God’s plan for the family. The dads in question invariably put their relationships with their kids in front of their relationships with their wives, to which they will rarely admit.

Fathers often tell me that when they get home from work, they play with their kids.

“Why do you do that?” I ask.

“Well, um, I haven’t seen them all day.”

“But you haven’t seen or probably even talked to your wife all day either,” I point out. “Why do you think your priority is to your kids?”

Deer in the headlights.

The modern dad wants to be his children’s best bud. So, he becomes a part-time playmate. In effect, he becomes a quasi-peer to his kids. His stature in his family is thus diminished, which explains why the most sexist “joke” told is told by married women, who, when asked how many children they have, include their husbands in the count.

America would be a much, much better place if men like Jimmy Stewart and John Wayne were top-shelf male role models.

Copyright 2023, John K. Rosemond