We tell teenage boys: "Volunteer. Join that club. Lead that project. It'll look great on your college application." This is one of the most damaging pieces of advice we can give them. It's creating a generation of young men who are accomplished and adrift. Here's why: 🧵 This advice instrumentalizes virtue. It turns service, leadership, and hard work into mere tools for personal gain (careerism). The goal is no longer the good work itself, but the line it adds to a resume. This creates a deep and hollow "purpose-void."

Karen Horney has been my biggest influence in psychology.
She explained why “nice guys” burn out, why some become tyrants, and why others vanish into isolation. All of it comes from the same root. A quick guide 🧵 Horney (1885–1952) was a German psychoanalyst who broke from Freud. Forget Oedipus complexes—she said the real driver of human misery is deeper: Basic Anxiety.
Once you get this, people’s behavior starts making scary sense.

I’m old. At my church growing up, youth ministry was sex-segregated and led by the fathers (mostly in suits). Only the youth choir and Sunday School were co-ed. I didn’t see the wisdom in that—until I wrote my book on fatherhood. Here’s why, backed by research: Black boys in America don’t just need mentors.
They thrive socially, economically, spiritually, etc. with deeply invested older Black men—especially fathers—who build trust with their family, speak into their identity, and walk with them as extended family.

We raised GenZ/GenAlpha boys to be sweet, self-effacing "nice guys" that all the moms like. Now they’re terrified of rejection, addicted to video games, paralyzed by fear--a reaction again the narcissism of millennials. Let me explain how we created a generation of doormats. To fix “toxic masculinity,” we overcorrected.
We taught boys:
– never to take up space
– never to be assertive
– never to want anything strongly
– always to be soft, sensitive, agreeable
Now we have 20-year-olds who won't ask girls out or grow up. Don't blame video games.

Wess Roley, 20, killed 2 firefighters in Idaho brush fire sparked with flint. Not MAGA-related. Fits psych data on boys from divorced homes raised by moms: higher risk of destructive behavior. Here's why this matters: Hurt boys grow to be men who tend to hurt others. Wess Roley grew up amid significant family turmoil. In September 2015, his mother filed for divorce, alleging that her husband, Wesley Roley Sr. had threatened her, pushed her to the ground, punched holes in walls, etc. Broken.

This is a 1930 lynching. For whites, lynching was a social event. Like a college football game. My father tells how white girls, knowing their power, would taunt black boys in Atmore, AL when he was a kid: they would invite them to kiss them so they could get them lynched. They’d threaten to lie about being assaulted by black boys, knowing it could get them lynched. My dad said black boys would run from white girls to avoid false accusations. The white girls/women—active in Southern churches—knew exactly what they were doing because they were evil.

Young Life was founded in 1941—well-intended but a bit misguided. Teens weren’t disengaged from church; they lacked their father's spiritual formation at home. Fathers are the greatest predictor of faith persistence into adulthood. Rayburn should’ve launched "Father Life"! Again, have decades of data, dating back to the 1840s, that fathers are greatest predictor of faith persistence from childhood to adulthood, and instead of hiring pastors for men and fathers, churches hire youth pastors.🤦🏾‍♂️This still happens today!! Decades of data about fathers!

Oops. The 1950s suburban nuclear family was a massive cultural mistake: men were away from their children most of the week, the homes were terribly lonely for women, teenagers were around peers all the time and became delinquent, adultery exploded, men were lost & anxious, mothers were viewed as the only important adult in the home and bore too much of the responsibility for managing all aspects of family life, fathers were just a source of income, suburban social life was boring, unhappy & frustrated mothers became distant from their children,

Wrong: I’ve written two books on Thomas Sowell. These posts are tiring & silly. Welfare destroyed marriage only among blacks in the lower quintile (the poor). Most blacks are not on welfare and @rothmus is presenting some nonsense here. Here’s why @prageru is dead wrong & lying:

https://twitter.com/rothmus/status/1889166886530646366

(1) AFDC grew in expansion to blacks in the early 1970s after Jim Crow. In 1970, approximately 22.3% of the African American population was receiving (welfare) AFDC benefits. Welfare impacted marriage for the 22.3% NOT the 77.7%. Conservatives are misleading people grossly here!

One of the largest influences on traditional black church music during slavery was the Scottish Hebrides Gaelic Lined-Out Psalm singing tradition. The Scots-Irish & enslaved blacks were so integrated as “lower-class” people that slaves learned & adapted lined-out Scottish forms.

This is what the original Scottish Gaelic Psalm singing sounded like.

Evangelicals are gullible because they lust after social power and the influence of people "in high places." The GOP has been using white evangelicals as a political pawn to maintain power since the 1970s. Donald Trump is signaling that he could not care less about evangelicals.

Revivalist evangelicals, for some reason, were led to believe that being brought into the "halls of power" would influence America's faith, morals, and politics. The black church did not fall for this evangelical approach, given evangelical's history on race during Jim Crow.

Is “Christian Masculinity/Raising Boys” the new $$ hustle? This guy wants to charge y’all $65 to teach y’all how to have friends and conduct a rite-of-passage programs for your sons. Dads, you don’t need this. I can tell you how to do this for free! 😂😂😂 You guys are not helpless children. You can figure out how to have fun with each other & your sons on your own terms. No website needed! 😎 1) How to have friends: do stuff together on a regular basis (work, fun, study, listen) and “encourage each other daily.”

One of the biggest differences between the PCA and the PC(USA), is that the PCA is full of pastors like Rev. Zachary Garris who believe that the transatlantic slave trade is supported by the Bible. He’s a graduate of Reformed Theological Seminary in Jackson, MS. Rev. Garris only believes that the abuses of slavery were wrong, not chattel slavery itself. This raises several questions. 1) How did he graduate from RTS holding these views? and 2) How did he pass his ordination exams holding these views?

Therapist Jim Brillon on “Mother and Son Enmeshment.” You’ll never hear a church leader discuss this. We talk too much about “father wounds” but lots of young men fail to launch because of their mothers. This is a huge trend in the South. “If mama ain’t happy, no one is…” I’ve had male college students over the years who had moms that required their sons to talk them every night. True story. These were Christian moms from conservative churches. Many moms look to their sons to get the emotional support they need & don’t have from their husbands.

Thoughts? Can we stop whining about young Christian guys following Peterson, Rogan, Tate, etc. These men aren’t a problem. Neither is YouTube. The problem is that the other men in the lives of teens aren’t compelling. Youth group/Christian schools infantilize boys with moralism. Also, the problem is that many of their own fathers aren’t speaking greatness into the core issues in their son’s lives. Fathers aren’t empowered or encouraged because, for some silly reason, we think teens need to listen to a 24-year-old who is “cool” and “fun.”🤦🏽‍♂️

I *almost* approached a dad in a restaurant yesterday to ask him for an interview about being a dad. The way he was interacting with his three sons, esp. his teen son, was really beautiful. I actually choked up. I debated approaching but I didn’t want to interrupt what I saw.😂🤷🏾‍♂️ The reason I choked up is that his teenage son is probably clueless about how rare it is for a dad to be *that* engaged (eye-contact), affectionate, & joyful with sons in public. Read the data! When they got up to leave, the teen was beaming with self-confidence!!

If church men are policing women about being “immodest,” women should started telling guys to stop looking like slobs. I recently had to tell a young guy to stop wearing hoodies & jeans everywhere. I pointed him in the direction below and 3 things happened: 1) ⬆️self-confidence

2) girls started saying “yes” when he asked them out. 3) He walked into a job interview and nailed it. He noticed that people automatically treated him differently with greater respect when his shirt was tucked in and he looked like a professional.

I've changed my mind, I used to think that conservative evangelicals valued the role of fathers. I no longer believe that. A 30-year study shows that the most important determinant of faith persistence in kids is the *relational* warmth of fathers, then grandfathers. I cannot name a single pastor or church in America, that structures children & youth programming around this fact. Conservative churches wrongly focus on fathers as "spiritual heads" when fathers as relational & affection heads matters 100x more than leading a family devotion.

My advice to churches searching for their next pastor: hire the guy who is a no-name, has no social media presence, whose sermons are faithful to the Text but doesn't "wow," is faithful to the Lord, his wife, his kids, and loves all of those people *more* than the church. You want someone who will not "put your church on the map" because he's too busy doing home visits and sending elders into hospitals. You want the guy who does not speak at conferences and does not write articles & blog on ministry websites.

“It’s the pastors.” This is the source of the problem. I realized this yesterday. US pastors don’t believe in a father’s influence at home. Most really don’t. They may preached about it but they don’t staff their churches accordingly. If they believed it, here’s what you’d see:

https://twitter.com/drantbradley/status/1726565326492733662

A dedicated ministry to fathers and support specifically for fathers. The data is so clear that faith persistence for children into adulthood is driven by great dads. So, what do US pastors do instead of staffing to build great dads: they build a youth & family ministry. 🤦🏽‍♂️Wrong!

Today the men of Alpha Tau Omega at Grand Valley State U. brought me to campus to talk to them about being men of unwavering virtue. One lad’s basic response, “I felt like running through a wall after you spoke. So pumped!” They we’re so grateful! After the event, I went back to their fraternity house and we talked for two more hours. College guys need adults who believe in them. They’ve been beat down about being male their whole lives. So sad. Fraternity men want to be great men but America has given up on them.