Missouri Republican Sen. Josh Hawley in an interview on Father’s Day that strong male role models are needed to encourage masculine qualities in the current “epidemic of fatherlessness.”
Speaking to the Washington Examiner, Hawley explained that fathers have a responsibility to provide and protect their families — despite what some critics of traditional gender roles currently say about fatherhood.
“As I continue to grow as a father, I think about providing for your family, protecting them, and then really taking care of them, seeing them grow, those are the main things that I think about as a father, and at least at the stage I’m in. I’m in now, it’s very important,” Hawley said.
“Men are told all the time that being a man is toxic, that if you’re a man, you make the world a worse place, and that fathers are irrelevant or maybe they just —will contribute to great injustice in the world,” Hawley said. “All that stuff is untrue. We need fathers.”
JOSH HAWLEY: AMERICA NEEDS ‘STRONGER MEN’
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Sen. said. Josh Hawley that fathers have a responsibility to provide and protect their families. (Tom Williams/Getty Images)
Hawley, who has two sons and a daughter, told the Examiner that being a father is “the best thing you can do in your life.”
“There’s tremendous value in being a father, you know,” he said. “I mean, I just say unapologetically the best thing you can do with your life, you want your life to matter. Get married, have a family, be a husband, be a father, invest your life in the lives of others, don’t live just for yourself. That will be the path to true happiness and true worth.”
The GOP lawmaker said young men lacking strong male role models is a generational problem that can lead to a lack of purpose and goals in life. build a constructive family life.
There has been a recent decline among Americans in getting married, starting a family, moving out of their parents’ house and becoming financially independent, which Hawley attributes to fatherlessness and the media.
Hawley also criticized “the Left and their media messaging” for often putting men down. He said they often show fathers “either absent or abusive or idiots.”
The senator acknowledged that there are men who are absent or abusive and that those behaviors are “bad” but explained that men need to show the value of their contributions to their families.
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Sen. said. Josh Hawley called out the Left for pushing a message of toxic masculinity. (Bill Clark/CQ-Roll Call, Inc via Getty Images)
The 43-year-old Republican emphasized that men who grew up without positive male role models can “break the cycle” by promising to “change the fortunes of your family.”
“You don’t have to do it perfectly, but if you try to spend time with your kids, if you try to invest in them, that will pay big dividends in their lives and in your life,” he said.
According to Hawley, young men who lack role models can fill that void by tapping into the content widely available online.
“Just think about the things that kids are exposed to today, on mobile platforms, on the internet, on social media, and I think, as a parent, there are so many, so many people who want to influence my children, who would rather raise my children than me,” she told the Examiner. “Do you have [President] Joe Biden said they are all our children. No, they are not. They are their parents. There’s a reason for that.”
Hawley was referring to recent comments Biden made during Pride Month celebrations in which the president said LGBTQ+ youth are “all our children.” The president said in the video that these children “are not somebody else’s children, they are all our children.”
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Sen. said. Josh Hawley that fatherhood is “the best thing you can do in your life.” (Anna Moneymaker-Pool/Getty Images)
The senator said that many young men are never educated and that these individuals “are the guys who are… still in mom and dad’s basement or … living somewhere on their screen at age 30 and can’t hold down a regular job … I mean, there’s just no sense of purpose.”
Other young men will accept the messages they hear about male toxicity and seek out other men to encourage destructive, aggressive or violent behavior, Hawley says.
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“What we need to find are role models who show what good, strong, healthy masculinity looks like — that is self-sacrifice, willing to give up your own interests and ambitions for someone else’s and willing to use power and influence . you have to benefit others,” he added.
Hawley said this advice for young men begins in his own home as he balances his work as a senator with taking care of his family.
The senator’s book, “Manhood: The Masculine Virtues America Needs,” was published last month.