What accounts for the dramatic growth of kids living without their biological father in the home? What are some of the social impacts of what is called “dad deprivation?” What is the effect of dads on the mental health of kids? We’ll discuss these questions and more with our guest, Dr. Anthony Bradley, well known scholar and author, current distinguished research fellow at the Acton Institute and professor at Kuyper College.

Anthony Bradley serves as a distinguished research fellow at The Acton Institute and Research Professor of Interdisciplinary and Theological Studies at Kuyper College.
Dr. Bradley lectures at colleges, universities, business organizations, conferences, and churches throughout the U.S. and abroad. His writings on religious and cultural issues have been published in a variety of journals, including: the Philadelphia Inquirer, the Washington Examiner, Al-Jazeera, the Atlanta Journal-Constitution, the Detroit News, Christianity Today, and World Magazine.
Dr. Bradley is called upon by members of the broadcast media for comment on current issues and has appeared on C-SPAN, NPR, CNN/Headline News, and Fox News, among others.
His books include: Liberating Black Theology (2010), Black and Tired (2011), The Political Economy of Liberation (2012), Keep Your Head Up (2012), Aliens In The Promised Land (2013), John Rawls and Christian Social Engagement (2014), Black Scholars In White Space (2015), Something Seems Strange (2016), Ending Overcriminalization and Mass Incarceration (2018), Faith In Society (2019), Why Black Lives Matter (2020), and Heroic Fraternities (2023).



Episode Transcript

Scott Rae: [upbeat music] What accounts for the dramatic growth of kids living without their biological father in the home? What are some of the social impacts of what is called dad deprivation? And what is the effects of dads on the mental health of children? We'll discuss these questions and a whole lot more with a very special guest, Dr. Anthony Bradley, a well-known scholar, multiple author, currently distinguished research fellow at the Acton Institute, and professor of theology at Kuyper College. I'm your host, Scott Rae, and this is Think Biblically from Talbot School of Theology at Biola University. Anthony, delight to have you with us. So pleased that you could take time, away from Acton University and, come be with us for this really important subject of fatherhood.

Anthony Bradley: Happy to be here. Thanks for having me.

Scott Rae: So w- tell me this, w- it seems like from hearing you speak and reading your material on this subject, it seems like this is really personal to you. So why-- Tell us a little bit about why you are so passionate about the subject of fatherhood.

Anthony Bradley: Great question. So the entry point for me was in two different spaces. One was early on in seminary. I went to Covenant Seminary in St. Louis and started doing some youth ministry there in the inner city, and as the data shows, w- lots of students with absent fathers, and so I just began to see the kids struggle, and I was curious as to why, and just looked at the data, and there was almost a one-to-one correspondence. If you saw a struggling child, it was probably 'cause they had a broken family and an absent father. The other one was when I was teaching high school. I taught at a Christian school in Philadelphia. When I was a student at Westminster Seminary, I taught at Philmont Christian Academy, and as another teacher and I noticed something startling. I taught ninth grade Bible, Old Testament to 14-year-olds. [chuckles]

Scott Rae: God help you. [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: Yes, which was, yeoman's task for sure. We noticed something interesting, and this was 20, 25 years ago. We noticed that the girls were doing fine. They were walking around our campus, head up high, shoulders back. They're in class, answering questions, really engaged, and the boys were walking around like zombies. And we were trying to figure out why is it the boys were struggling, and the girls weren't? And again, this was, this was almost 25 years ago. And so what we did is we decided to have a men's Bible study. We just opened it up for all the boys to come, and it was a noon hour on a Wednesday in the art room, and we thought, "Okay, all the boys who are from really struggling households will be there." But this is what we noticed: the boys that showed up who were really struggling were the elder's kids-

Scott Rae: Really?

Anthony Bradley: ... And the, and the pastor's kids-

Scott Rae: Interesting

Anthony Bradley: ... And the theologian's kids, and the business owner's kids, and the lawyer's kids, and the doctor's kids. It was the kids that you thought on the surface were fine, but they were really struggling. And so as I began to look at the way that my students were living and struggling, I began to connect some of those dots. And the very last piece is when I did my, research on criminal justice and noticed that in the juvenile system, something around 75 to 80% of the boys in the, in the juvenile system come from father-absent homes. And in that research, what I found is that the juvenile system is not full of bad kids; they're full of hurt kids. And when boys are hurt, particularly when their dads are absent, they act out, and they express that by taking it out on the rest of us.

Scott Rae: That's-- Those are th- sort of three strikes, and you're out here. That's a, that's a lot, I think, a lot of good reasons to be passionate about this subject. Now, you, in your work, you trace back historically to the impact of the Industrial Revolution on, specifically on fathers and boys. What was so impactful about that? 'Cause I don't, I don't think we often think about that, this father deprivation that far back historically.

Anthony Bradley: I think what happens sometimes is that Christians are sometimes unaware that so many of the issues in the church and in society are on the heels or adjacent to massive shifts in the economy. When the economy changes, when the way that families function, the way work changes, it actually changes the way people parent. And from the Book of Genesis to about the 1830s or '40s, it was standard for parents and their children to be next to each other all day long, and we're talking on a family farm, or they had some sort of family business. They may have run a sawmill, or the father was a cobbler or an ironworker, something like that. The girls were usually with the mom in the home, sort of helping to keep the home, but the boys were often right next to their dads, almost in an apprentice sort of role- ... Learning the craft and the trade. Well, for the first time in human history, dads were gone from the home all day long, and they would reconnect with their kids at the end of the workday. That massively changed the nature and structure of how families worked. That was the same period where this thing called adolescence was invented, and for the first time in human history, we had teens who were not adjacent to their dads all day long, and this created something called juvenile delinquency. By the time we got to the late 1800s, the very first juvenile court was instituted in Chicago, and the Latin phrase that was used to organize that court was locus parentus, the idea that the juvenile court system, the police, et cetera, are in the place of the father....and it was really that introduction of the way that work changed, how fathers worked, and how families worked, that we began to see some of those disconnections with children and their parents. And again, it's unnatural. It is unnatural for children to be separated from their parents all day long. They miss opportunities for secure attachment and connection.

Scott Rae: And we're still, you would say, we're, we're still reaping the whirlwind from that today in ways that we didn't expect?

Anthony Bradley: Absolutely. There was no way to plan for this. No one saw this coming. We just sort of ran with it, and the church sort of came on the, on the tails of that, trying to catch up and fill in the blanks.

Scott Rae: Now, you cite statistics in your work, and, I mean, I mean, God bless you for bringing a lot of data to bear on this, 'cause it's hard to argue with that. But the number of kids living with a single mom has increased dramatically over the past 50 years. Spell out a little bit some of the various things that you think account for that.

Anthony Bradley: That's, that's a great question. I think it's something, on the, on the scale, I think there's-- today, I think there's 1.4 million children in the country who are living with a single parent, mostly single moms. And what the data shows is there are really two main causes for that. One is divorce, and so when no-fault divorce got introduced in the '80s, thanks to Ronald Reagan, that-

Scott Rae: In my home state of California.

Anthony Bradley: Yes, the state of California, and Ronald Reagan introduced no-fault divorce. It got nationalized, and so the high rate of divorce was one variable, and the other variable was just simply women having children outside of marriage. So when you combine those two things in that trend line since the 1950s, in particular, we begin to see these massive increases in single-parent families. I think what's different today versus, say, 19- the '70s and '80s, is that today you have women who are on purpose having children outside of the context of marriage, rather than, say, it be an accident of a relationship. But today, there are women who, on purpose, are intentionally having children outside of the context of marriage. Those are the two main causes of so much dad deprivation and also single-parent families, because in a divorce situation, the fathers usually are the ones that are the most disconnected from the kids.

Scott Rae: Now, you cite, just to follow up on that, you cite that the, basically, the number of kids living with a single mom due to divorce has remained fairly steady since the introduction of no-fault divorce, but what has skyrocketed is this single mothers by choice. Why-- what accounts for that?

Anthony Bradley: That's a great question. I'm, I'm not exactly sure in terms of all the variables, but it just seems to be that in some communities, there is, unfortunately, a desert claim, and by that, women believe that they deserve a child, and they're not married. They're-- there's a r- there's a real clock there.

Scott Rae: Yes, there is.

Anthony Bradley: And so for a lot of professional women, it's this idea that, "I'm a lawyer, I'm 33, I deserve a child," right? And so what a lot of women are doing, they're actually going to sperm banks and opening up a catalog, and they're looking up guys, and they're, they're actually choosing to have children that way. The other thing is that for a lot of communities, especially in low-income, rural, and inner-city communities, having a child for women is a rite of passage into adulthood. And so for a lot of young women in their 20s, they're, they're often seen as finally an adult when they have a child. That's, that's that rite of passage, and so there's no stigma like there used to be, because now I'm a grown woman with a child. As you get younger, late teens, a lot of the late teens and very early 20s, a lot of those women, the data shows, is they'll, they'll have children, sadly, because they want at least one person in their life to give them unconditional love and affection. And I think for a lot of, p- particularly in the church context, some of that is misunderstood, and they just assume, "Oh, they're just being rebellious and sinful." Yes, God does not want them to have children outside of marriage, but the reason they're doing it is that they want someone to love them back and to have at least one consistent person with whom they can have some reciprocal affection.

Scott Rae: Strikes me that that's getting the order backward. [chuckles] Because I thought it was parents who were supposed to give unconditional love to their children, not expect it back from them. But we'll just-- we'll, we'll leave that... Well, we- let's not go down that road at the moment. Now, a common pushback that I hear from African American, communities and dads in particular, is that the absent fathers has, in part, to do with incarceration policies from our criminal justice system, that put a lot of African American dads in prison for minor offenses, and then took them away from their families unnecessarily. What, what do you make of that claim?

Anthony Bradley: That is a true claim in those communities with high incarceration rates, but overall, that doesn't explain the high levels of single-parent families in the Black community in general. I say that because most Black men are not criminals, and they're not incarcerated. In fact, we've always had more young men in college than we have had young Black men in prison. So there is this narrative that it's incarceration, but that would really mean incarcerating about something on the, you know, sort of six, seven percent of the population, and that's not the number of [chuckles] people we currently have incarcerated.

Scott Rae: Right.

Anthony Bradley: Now, there are some outlier communities, where that, in fact, is the case.... But overall, but overall, there's a culture where marriage has lost its aspiration as the cornerstone of a good life, and it's not so much because of incarceration. I think the aspiration for marriage has also declined, and then also the opportunities to do so, and largely because of some employment stress. So what's really interesting-

Scott Rae: I get that.

Anthony Bradley: What's really interesting about some men in particular, is that their interest in marriage and their interest in providing for children is correlated with their desire or opportunities to gainfully be employed and provide economically for their children. Now, there is some research that indicates that that variable doesn't weigh quite as heavy, but I think largely we've just lost the culture of marriage in a lot of low-income communities, both rural but also in inner cities. The incarceration narrative, to me, doesn't fully account for the 13% of the US population that's African American. I just don't think, and the data doesn't show this, that we're locking up 6%-

Scott Rae: Yeah

Anthony Bradley: ... Of the population-

Scott Rae: Yeah

Anthony Bradley: ... As a, as a cause of that.

Scott Rae: That's, that's helpful. So, you know, maybe play a small role, but not the major role. Now, you spend a lot of time talking about the consequences of what you... I love the term you've just-- you've coined, the dad deprivation. What, of all the consequences of that, what's the, what is the one or two consequences of that that are most striking and most stand out to you?

Anthony Bradley: I would say that the one, the ones that stand out to me that are the most worrisome are impulsivity, just the lack of impulse control, and then secondly, the absence of delayed gratification. Now, the reason those things are important is that if you can exercise self-control, if you're someone who can exercise delayed gratification, you'll never be poor. And secondly, if someone can exercise self-control, as it's frequently articulated in the Bible, you're also less likely to sin and make mistakes and make bad decisions, et cetera. And so it's one of the reasons I think that we see so many young adult- teens and young adults who make really unwise decisions because they're just impulsive. One of the things that fathers do is they ground their children's central nervous system so that they don't make impulsive decisions, and fathers are really good at helping their children delay gratification, mostly through something as magical as play. Here's how the mechanism works: kids love to play with their dads. They absolutely... They're enthralled. They're thrilled to play with their dads. Sometimes they'll provoke their dads. [chuckles] "I bet you can't catch me." [chuckles] "Let's play hide and seek." They'll come and poke you in your side and then go running 'cause they want you to chase them and things like that. One of the things the data shows is that fathers who roughhouse with their kids, especially their boys, they're much less likely to ever struggle with porn addiction and video game addiction, and largely because the boys and the kids learn delayed gratification. How does that work? Dad says this: "We can roughhouse and play after you do what your mom says. Your mom said you had to clean the room, you gotta do the dishes, we gotta mow the lawn," or whatever. "After we do that, then we can go play, then we can roughhouse." So the kid, the kid learns, "Oh-

Scott Rae: Interesting.

Anthony Bradley: ... I'm going to delay the fun with my dad for the sake of cleaning the bathroom." And that reinforcement mechanism that gets habituated over time actually trains the child's brain and gives them massive advantages in terms of being able to delay gratification. That happens in the context of play. That happens in the context of dads delaying what the kids really want to do, which is have fun with their fathers.

Scott Rae: That's really, that's really insightful. And I think it just... I reflect back on, you know, I, as we have, we have three boys, and all the roughhousing we did, and how my wife and her mom especially said, "Don't you play so rough with those kids!" [chuckles] And they-- I mean, and they absolutely loved it. They could not get enough of it. And that, I just, that's new to me, that how that impacted their central nervous system.

Anthony Bradley: Absolutely.

Scott Rae: That's really interesting.

Anthony Bradley: Absolutely, and what's interesting about roughhousing and play is it's free, and you don't need a master's degree. You don't need to read 10 books on it. I always, when I, when I do men's retreats, I just tell the dads, "When you come home from the retreat, as soon as you get in the house, you hug and kiss your wife, and then you, and then you just wrestle with your kids." And every single men's retreat I've ever done, and I talk about this data, on Monday or Sunday night-

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: ... I'll just get flooded with emails from dads who are saying, "You know what? I went home, and I just wrestled my 14-year-old son, and our relationship has changed."

Scott Rae: Isn't that something?

Anthony Bradley: Two months later, "We're, we're way more close than we used to be," mainly because of that roughhousing. What happens during roughhousing? Two hormones are released: oxytocin, which is the love hormone, and dopamine- ... Which is the feel-good hormone. Both of those are released with the father and the son and the children, and so when there's a level of joy and also a level of connection, it just builds this sort of intimacy that we w- that we want kids to have with their, with their fathers. And so what happens is, when you do this early on, your children are much more likely to come to you as dads when they struggle in teens and in their early twenties because you've built a level of-

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm

Anthony Bradley: ... Of trust, and their default memory of father is that, "This is where I go to get joy."

Scott Rae: ... So maybe we could we put it like this, that roughhousing builds relational capital with the, with dads and kids?

Anthony Bradley: It, it builds relational capital, and it also sets your children up to be really wise in the future.

Scott Rae: Nice.

Anthony Bradley: One, one of the things I noticed over the teaching at Christian College over the years is that, is that self-confidence is the birthplace of wisdom in terms of applying what the scriptures say, because if you are confident in who you are, and you're confident in who God says that you are, and you know that your parents love you no matter what, then you're willing to be excluded for the sake of righteousness.

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm.

Anthony Bradley: And I've had a number of students who've told me over the years, "You know what? These group of my peers, they don't like what I do. They might reject me, but my father still loves me, and my father still thinks I'm awesome, and my father still believes in me." Now, that's also theological-

Scott Rae: Hear, hear.

Anthony Bradley: Right? And so even as adults, as adult Christians, when you believe and know that God, your Father, is for you and cares for you and loves you and gives you grace and mercy, then you're free to live out what the scriptures say and to embrace grace.

Scott Rae: Yes, that's good stuff. That's, and that's really good theology, too. Now, say a little bit about the connection between absent dads and poverty rates for families.

Anthony Bradley: Yeah, it's, it's really interesting. I mean, it will, it will make sense to people. Most, most fathers provide a lot of income for the household. It's on average, men are in higher paying jobs than women. When women are single moms with kids, they often don't have the best employment opportunities because they have to leave, and they have to have some somewhat flex- somewhat flexible schedules. So they tend to earn-- they tend to operate and earn less than men in terms of their jobs. Now, single fathers, for reasons that the data shows, kids are actually, and this is highly controversial, people will not like... [chuckles] they're not gonna like to hear this, but kids are better off with single fathers than they are single mothers.

Scott Rae: Interesting. How so?

Anthony Bradley: Because fathers are much more likely to have higher incomes, and they're much more likely to have s- more stable environments. And when single moms have lower incomes, they're much more stressed and anxious, and often what happens is that that stress and anxiety is taken out on the kids. So kids are often victims of the abuse and negl- and neglect of stressed out moms. If Mom's working two jobs to support the kids, she's never there, and when she is home, she's tired, she's exhausted, doesn't have a lot of patience. You know you need patience with kids, right? You need, you need that. Have you ever had to exercise patience with your kids?

Scott Rae: Not that I can remember. [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: Okay, your kids are perfect, so never mind.

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: But other than their acres, you know, you need that, and so her bandwidth is really small for that, and so kids really struggle more in homes where the, where the, where it's just, where it's just the mom. It's just a lot of burden on women to do all the things that moms do and have a job and a half.

Scott Rae: Yeah-

Anthony Bradley: So, like-

Scott Rae: ... And of course, this, you know, this is not to cast aspersions on moms who are single, not by choice.

Anthony Bradley: No, it's-

Scott Rae: And, and, you know, moms who maybe got divorced against their will, or are widows or something like that, who are doing a heroic job of trying to, trying to do it all.

Anthony Bradley: Yeah- ... It's, it's really just a matter of the facts of how the market works. I mean, it's just unfortunate that women in those situations are not able to sort of accrue higher paying jobs, and so unfortunately, they bear so much burden in terms of having to do everything, and it o-

Scott Rae: Yeah

Anthony Bradley: ... It often wears the moms out. It's just really sad. Now, I would say that this is where the church is really important. I think churches that have single moms need the churches to come in, the whole community to come in and support single moms, in particular, to take some of the burdens off, and that could be financially, it could be taking care of the kids, it could be all sorts of things, just to help her be a fantastic mother.

Scott Rae: Now, there's one more impact of dad deprivation that caught me a little off guard, and that is, I mean, it's, it's obv-- you've already said that the, that not having a dad in the home affects the child's mental health. But what I wasn't prepared for is that the dad's mental health affects the child's mental health. So spell out that connection a little bit further.

Anthony Bradley: Yeah, so it's, it's... So children will essentially mimic their parents in lots of ways. They'll mimic the foods that you like often, or the sports teams that you like, and things like that. How you dress, how you walk, how you talk, hand gestures, and things like that. One of the things that the data shows very clearly is that children internalize the mental health status of their parents. So if Dad is depressed, their kids will be depressed. If Dad is anxious, their kids will be anxious because he's parenting out of anxiety.

Scott Rae: Interesting, yeah.

Anthony Bradley: If, if the, father is highly stressed out, he'll parent as a stressed out dad, which stresses out the kids. Now, the good news is, the corollary is also true, that when fathers are full of joy, their kids are full of joy. When their dads are full of gratitude, their kids are full of gratitude.... So it's really important, I told a group of dads this recently at a men's retreat, is that it's really important for dads to do whatever internal work is necessary to make sure they're doing well. And I think this is where churches really need to, support dads more, provide more resources for fathers, so that they can be really healthy influences on their kids, because their kids are going to mirror whatever state of mind their parents are in, almost no matter what.

Scott Rae: Now, you cite a study out of the University of Texas that had some pretty surprising results about the impact of dads on, the mental health of their children, the social impact on their children. Sp- what did that study suggest, and w- how is that insightful for us?

Anthony Bradley: Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really interesting. I think anyone who's, who's a teacher in the, in the grade, in the K to 12 space will understand this. When I was a high school teacher, and I, and I had a kid who a- would act out, act out in class, I would always ask, "Well, what's going on at home? You're in class talking, being disruptive. Just tell me what happened at home." And, and we know that father absence is correlated with high rates of depression, high rates of anxiety, and for girls in particular, high rates of suicidal ideation. For boys, very high rates of successful suicides. We've never had... I've, I've been following this since Columbine. It's almost never happened that we've had a school shooting since Columbine, where a male school shooter was close to his dad.

Scott Rae: Interesting.

Anthony Bradley: There was almost every single school shooting is a boy who experienced dad deprivation, and that could be a d- a dad who was totally absent or a dad who was in the home and not connected. Now, the interesting thing about that Texas study is we also know that fathers are correlated with ac- with academic performance. So kids who are closer to their fathers are much more likely to have good grades, to have very good attendance, and to be interested in learning. If father's curious in learning-

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm

Anthony Bradley: ... About learning, kids will be curious about learning. I would describe it this way: when I was a kid, we used to buy these plastic... They seem to me these, like, a plastic lawnmower, right?

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm.

Anthony Bradley: So, like, dad's mowing the lawn, and the kid's outside with his plastic lawnmower, mowing the lawn, right? Well, guess what's true? If kids see their fathers reading, they will read. If kids see their fathers excited about history, they'll be excited about history. If their dad is into math, they will be into math.

Scott Rae: Darn it. [laughing]

Anthony Bradley: And so, and so fathers have a really almost magical opportunity to open up their children to thriving and success just by being a certain kind of person-

Scott Rae: Yeah

Anthony Bradley: ... Which is really, fascinating. So that Texas study just runs through all these variables, from mental health to academic performance, and we can also predict the likelihood of a child getting a job later on in life, depending on how close they are with their fathers.

Scott Rae: What, what about... Does this hold true for daughters, too? What, is-- or is the impact of dads on daughters a little bit different than it is on boys?

Anthony Bradley: It is, it is different. I would say that for fathers of girls, they really need to pay attention to this one piece in particular, and this always blows dads away when I mention this at men's retreats and men's conferences and at churches, is that a girl's onset of puberty is correlated with how close she feels to her father.

Scott Rae: Really? Biologically.

Anthony Bradley: Biologically.

Scott Rae: Huh.

Anthony Bradley: There's a biological mechanism at play here. When, when girls feel disconnected from their fathers, you're twice as likely to enter into puberty before the age of 12.

Scott Rae: Really?

Anthony Bradley: When girls are disconnected from their fathers, they're much more likely to enter into puberty early. They're also twice as likely to engage in sexual promiscuity and se- and sexual riskiness as pre-teens and teens when they're disconnected from their fathers. We also knew this about girls in college, is that when girls are not close to their fathers when they enroll in college, that first couple of semesters, they are much more likely to stuggle- struggle with substance abuse, and they're much more likely to engage in risky sexual behavior. And universities, I think, should pay attention to this. In fact, if I was working in student affairs, as a survey question, I would just ask all the students, one of the questions [chuckles] would be, "How close do you feel to your father?" And you can probably predict what's going to happen that first semester just based on that variable alone. There's a, there's a really fantastic book on this issue with daughters called The Absent Father: Effects on Daughters- ... By Susan Swartz. It is Rutledge Press. She is an analytic-- She is a psychoanalyst and works with girls. I'll just run down really quickly just some of the impact with girls. It'll take, like, ten seconds. Real, really quick here. Number one, I mentioned early puberty. Secondly, w- increased likelihood of sexual promiscuity. W- girls will feel psychological effects like unworthiness, fear of abandonment, attachment disorders, emotional and identity, issues. They will struggle with feeling-- with a sense of belonging and identity. When fathers are absent from girls, they actually have a lower cognitive development. They also have lower academic achievement, especially in math. We also note, with father absence, high increases for girls in depression, anxiety, and financial instability later. And lastly, much more likely to drop out of high school.... And much more likely to, struggle, with substance abuse, use over their life course, so over the course of their life. Now, here's wh- the last point here is fascinating, is that the closer girls are to their fathers, and I want fathers to listen to this very carefully, the closer girls are to their fathers, the less likely they are to struggle with poor mental health because of social media. So the a- the antidote to girls struggling with the negative messaging from social media is hearing and experiencing what her father says about her beauty, and her identity, and how important she is, and what her values are, her skills, and things like that.

Scott Rae: Something tells me that might also get back to our Heavenly Father, too.

Anthony Bradley: Imagine that.

Scott Rae: What, what a concept, huh? [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: Imagine that.

Scott Rae: Right.

Anthony Bradley: The same way that God treats us is God our Father, and what that, and what that does for us-

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm

Anthony Bradley: ... When in a family system, it has very similar outcomes.

Scott Rae: Now, you say a lot, in your work about the importance of dads for transmission of faith from one generation to the next. How, w- maybe even more so than moms?

Anthony Bradley: Yeah, there's great data on this. There's a great book called Faith in Families that covers this. Also, there's another book by Christian Smith, titled Handing Down the Faith, and we have over 30 years of data on this, on this point, that the most predictive variable for faith persistence from children into adulthood is the connection that children have with their father, especially if that father is understood to be a warm father, a father full of compassion, and mercy, and grace. Imagine that theologically-

Scott Rae: Yes

Anthony Bradley: ... That faith pers-

Scott Rae: Fits nicely, isn't it?

Anthony Bradley: That, that faith persistence is correlated with fathers who treat their kids in a way that provides very good structure, very good boundaries, but also warm, also affectionate. And what the data shows is that for children, it's not the youth pastor, it's not the Christian school, it's not VBS, it's not Sunday school, it's not the pastor, it's not... Anything at church doesn't predict this. What predicts this is the extent to which fathers are engaged with their children, both relationally but also theologically. Here's what I mean by that. The greatest predictor of faith persistence with children is having a warm father who engages their children in theological conversations about how faith meets life. Very, very clear in Deuteronomy, right?

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm.

Anthony Bradley: As you walk along the road. So when fathers are integrating faith in the car, when you're driving to soccer practice, at the grocery store, family meals at, in the evening, when you're doing yard work, when the fathers are integrating faith where it meets life as they walk along the road, that's a very strong predictor of faith persistence. The moms do have a role to play, but what really pushes it over the edge is the connection with their father. So I've basically been telling churches that instead of having youth group on Wednesday nights, you should have a fathers group, and then send them home, with their chil- with their, with their wives, to connect with their wives and their children, because that is what, predicts faith. And one of the things the church has done, almost in a, in a similar way as the juvenile system in terms of locus parentis, is that we've often introduced children's and youth ministry in the place of the father.

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm.

Anthony Bradley: And I think dads need to cap- recapture, reclaim that space, because when your children are close to you, and I don't wanna overstate it, but the data says this really clearly, that when your children are close to you will not have to worry about them when they leave home, because of all the things that you've cemented- ... In their minds, in their hearts, and their souls.

Scott Rae: Yeah, I've often felt that the role of the church was not to disciple my children, but it was to help me be better equipped to disciple my own children. And I, and I, that's... You know, thinking about the church in terms of in loco parentis is not exactly what we had in mind, and I think can be counterproductive in some of the ways that you are describing.

Anthony Bradley: Absolutely. There's, there's that verse in Malachi that, you know, part of, part of this, reunion and renewal of God's covenant people is that, is that the h- is that, "The hearts of the children would be turned to their fathers, and the hearts of the fathers would be turned to their children," right? And I honestly think that when churches are structured to turn the hearts of their fathers to their children and the hearts of their children to their parents, right, that they actually will produce the sort of children that they desire-

Scott Rae: Mm-hmm

Anthony Bradley: ... That they hope for and pray for. But it's, it's creating space for deep connection between parents and their children. So I would say, if I was planning a church, that one of the models of our, of our, children's and youth ministry would be, "We exist for the purpose of turning the hearts of parents to their children, and children to their parents." "And we wanna do everything that we can do to make sure that there's more affection and also more theological education, on the part of parents, so that they can, really spiritually develop their children."

Scott Rae: So one last question. Let's put a cap on this. What, what's the one best piece of advice you have to fathers so that they create positively to their kids' development?

Anthony Bradley: ... Hug your children every day. It's, it's just that simple. You gotta hug them every single day. And I tell parents, you have to ignore their body language.

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: If they act like they don't wanna be hugged, ignore it. Their bodies are in development. They've got all sort of hormonal things going on right now. But if you hug your children every day, that actually creates, over time, a context for conversation, connection, trust, vulnerability, et cetera. When they know that parents are a refuge, when they know their father is a refuge, that they can go to their fathers, their father's a rock, right? Their father, they can go to their father... You might think about it in terms of in times of trouble, their father is a refuge. I think that's theological. I don't know.

Scott Rae: [laughs]

Anthony Bradley: I may have read that somewhere in this really ancient text.

Scott Rae: Like, like in maybe one out of every three Psalms.

Anthony Bradley: Exactly. Exactly. So when kids experience their fathers as a refuge and as a rock, as someone solid to be there for them, all of the other things that we hope for them tend to fall in line. But it often comes with a level of connection that unfortunately has declined since the 1980s. We now have... I just saw some data recently that boys are complaining that they're touch starved- -and they're not getting a lot of affection at home, and I can't tell you the number of students I've taught over the years who said their dads had never really hugged them.

Scott Rae: Really? Ever?

Anthony Bradley: Ever.

Scott Rae: Oh.

Anthony Bradley: And, and I also was talking to a college student recently, and I asked him, "Tell, you know, what's it like when you hug your dad?" And he said, "Hug my dad?"

Scott Rae: [chuckles]

Anthony Bradley: He said, "That just sounds kinda weird." And I thought, "Oh, my goodness."

Scott Rae: Oh, that's tragic.

Anthony Bradley: Like, here's a college student, he thinks that hugging his sh- his s- his father is weird, which means that when he becomes a dad, he's not gonna do that either.

Scott Rae: That's right.

Anthony Bradley: Right? And so hugging your kids every day and just affirming them in the Lord actually covers a multitude of sins and inspires a multitude of both psychological, educational, and spiritual growth. It is one of the best ways that dads can make sure their kids thrive, is to just hug them every day. The data says for a minimum of 20 seconds, that releases oxytocin and dopamine. I challenge any father to do this: if you have a k- if you have a c- a child who's struggling, hug them every single day for 20 seconds for 30 days, and then report back and see what happens. Every dad that I've, I've done this, the kids actually change. They soften up, they start talking, they start sharing, they start asking you questions, simply out of a hug.

Scott Rae: Wow, that's, that's, that's quite the benediction here.

Anthony Bradley: All right.

Scott Rae: I so appreciate that. That's great advice, and I mean, Anthony, this has been so insightful. I hope... I'm sure our listeners will hugely benefit from this. Thank you so much for your insight, for basically, a lot of your life's work here has come out, [chuckles] I think, in the last 30 or 40 minutes. So very grateful for all your work, all your insight, and for taking the time to be with us. This is just super helpful.

Anthony Bradley: My pleasure. Thanks for having me.

Scott Rae: This has been an episode of the podcast Think Biblically: Conversations on Faith and Culture, brought to you by Talbot School of Theology at Biola University, including offering programs in Southern California and online. Visit biola.edu/talbot in order to learn more. If you'd like to submit comments, ask questions, or make suggestions on issues you'd like us to cover or guests you'd like us to consider, email us at thinkbiblically@biola.edu. If you enjoyed today's conversation with our friend, Dr. Anthony Bradley, give us a rating on your podcast app, and please share it with a friend. And join us on Friday for our weekly cultural update. In the meantime, thanks so much for listening, and remember, think biblically about everything. [upbeat music]