2018 Conference Talk
Manhood Is Not Natural
Why It's in Bad Shape & How to Recover It
by Glenn T. Stanton
Few would disagree that manhood is in crisis today. Men are falling behind women in many extremely important measures of personal and social well-being. This is well documented in books like Hannah Rosin's bluntly titled The End of Men. In deeply consequential ways, men have become the weaker sex. Bean-pole weak.
Some women celebrate this. Most, however, are deeply concerned, especially since the weakness of the men in their lives makes it increasingly difficult for them to fulfill two of their most important life wishes: becoming wives and becoming mothers. The equation is really quite simple: if boys don't become good, dependable men, they can't become good, dependable husbands and fathers. It's not that there are not enough males for young women today. It's the shortage of men. If women cannot find reliable, marriageable men with a future, they often go with other choices. Thus, it's no coincidence that the two fastest growing family formation trends among twenty- and thirty-something women are unmarried cohabitation and out-of-wedlock childbearing.
The causes of these trends can be found in the underappreciated and often strenuously denied distinct natures of manhood and womanhood. They are rooted in a strange but essential anthropological truth: Womanhood is natural. Manhood is not.
Womanhood Is Natural
Womanhood is a natural phenomenon. A female's biological make-up usually ensures that she will grow into a healthy woman. Leave her to herself, and she is much more likely than her male peers to move into mature adulthood. It's why the phrases "Woman up," "Be a woman," or "Make a woman out of her" don't exist.
As her body matures, internally and externally, it sends her and those around her an unmistakable message about what she is and what she's becoming. It moves her inexorably in that direction with a force as great as it is mysterious. Few girls miss these cues.
It's not just a girl's body that changes; she becomes a different person. Her family and community treat her differently because of it. A father shudders at it, as it forever changes the way he interacts with "his little girl." He must bow to and honor it. I'm the father of four girls. I know this all too well.
Women must be taught, with great political and ideological pressure, to ignore their womanhood and to abandon their children, for doing so is contrary to all nature. This political and ideological effort is, of course, radical feminism, which G. K. Chesterton asserts is ironically the movement to disdain all that is genuinely feminine.
Manhood Must Be Taught
Glenn T. Stanton is the director of Family Formation Studies at Focus on the Family. He debates and lectures extensively on the issues of gender, sexuality, marriage, and parenting at universities and churches around the world. He is the author of nine books, most recently: The Myth of the Dying Church: How Christianity Is Actually Thriving in America and the World, due out in June 2019.
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more on fatherhood from the online archives
16.5—June 2003
on the Importance of Fathers to Churchgoing by Robbie Low
14.1—January/February 2001
The Christian Heart of Fatherhood
The Place of Marriage, Authority & Service in the Recovery of Fatherhood by John M. Haas
32.2—March/April 2019
Finding Him Again Through the Patriarchal Group by Anthony Esolen
more from the online archives
28.2—March/April 2015
Neo-Pagan Family Policies Doom Any Recovery by Allan C. Carlson
32.6—November/December 2019
An Open Letter to Christian Readers of Jordan Peterson & Roger Scruton by James Bryson
calling all readers
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