The Path to Redefining Masculinity Starts With Fathers

There is a lot of talk right now about masculinity. What it should look like, what it has gotten wrong, what we want for the next generation of boys and men. But masculinity does not get redefined in headlines or comment sections. It gets redefined at home, by fathers, in the small moments our kids watch and absorb.

I am thinking about my own dad as I write this.

I had a dad who was so, so funny. I got my love of sarcasm from him. My Seinfeld references. My entire sense of humor came from him.

But I also had a dad who never healed from his own generational trauma. Some of it got passed down to me, including corporal punishment. Slapping was how anger showed up in our home. So I never got to learn how to channel anger or disagreement in a healthy way, because I was never shown one.

Both of those things are true at the same time. The humor and the hurt. The gifts and the patterns.

My guest this week, Brandon Webb, knows that tension well. He is a former Navy SEAL sniper instructor, a father of three, and the author of Puddle Jumpers. He had a complicated relationship with his own father and left home at 16, with no clear picture of what engaged fatherhood could look like. But he made a conscious decision to show up differently for his own kids. As he put it: we can take the good our parents gave us and leave some of the bad behind.

He shared a story about his daughter accidentally breaking a dish while visiting him. His response was simple: it was just a dish, and they could replace it. What mattered was that she was okay. Years later, she told him what a gift that calm was.

I felt that one in my chest. In my childhood kitchen, a spilled gallon of milk could change the temperature of the entire house.

This is the quiet power fathers and father figures hold. What a father models becomes what a child believes about men. How he handles anger teaches his son what strength looks like. How he responds to mistakes teaches his daughter what to expect from the men in her life. They are watching either way.

And here is the encouraging part: dads ARE showing up. Fathers today spend nearly three times as much time with their kids as dads did in the 1960s, according to Pew Research. Involved fatherhood is not the exception anymore. It is becoming the expectation. The desire is there. What many dads are missing is not motivation. It is a model.

So what does showing up actually look like?

Confidence is not something you give kids. It is something you let them build. And a father's most important jobs are to be present, watch his language, and resist the urge to do hard things for his children.

Brandon calls it "ordinary magic." I saw it with my own six-year-old at the bank. He wanted coins for his piggy bank, so I told him he could ask the teller himself. I would help him find the words, but I was not going to do the asking for him. He is naturally shy, and it felt hard. But he did it. Now he wants to order his own hot chocolate everywhere we go. It was such a small moment. But for him, it was not small at all.

The "watch his language" part comes straight from Brandon's sniper instructor days. He never verbalized a student's mistake, because telling a shooter "stop flinching" only puts the flinch in his head. The same is true at home. "Stop screaming" fills a room with screaming. Our voices become our kids' inner voice.

This conversation is especially for dads. But I walked away reflecting on my own parenting too. There will still be moments when I hear myself reacting in a way that feels familiar and wish I had handled it differently. That is part of the work: noticing it, reflecting on it, and trying again the next time.

We may not have been shown exactly how we want to parent. We are still allowed to do it differently. And maybe that is how masculinity actually gets redefined. Not in debates, but in kitchens and living rooms. One calm response to a broken dish at a time.

Listen to my full conversation with Brandon Webb wherever you get your podcasts and make sure to share this with fellow dads and father figures in your life

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