Become a Better Father

A Nietschean strategy for above-average fathers

Father’s Day is celebrated today in US and many other countries worldwide. On this occasion, I wanted to share some thoughts about a life goal I recently set for myself: to become a Better Father, with a capital B and capital F.

The Better Father is a status game¹ and a persona I came up with. We will discuss how it differs from another well known persona, the Good Father, and how being a Better Father can help both the parents and their children succeed in life.

Image by DALL-E 3

If you’re a woman, some of this can be leveraged to create an analogous Better Mother persona. However, I believe that the framework I presented here is overall more suited to men and fatherhood.

Obviously Good

Most modern discourse about fatherhood is focused on what it takes to be a Good Father. This cultural message is so pervasive that it seems pretty obvious what the Good Father should do with his children:

• Be a role model

• Spend a lot of time with them

• Always have time for them (i.e. no “Not now, son, I’m busy”)

• Protect them from harm

• Educate them and teach them stuff

• Provide emotional support

• Be playful

• Encourage them to take risks

• Show them the world

• Take them out on biking and hiking trips

And so on.

Of course, as with many things in life, all of this is easier said than done. This is because the more one prioritizes children, the less time and resources remain for hobbies, self-improvement and maintaining the relationship with the mother (i.e. sex, childless dates). Maintaining proper child-life balance is difficult, since being a Good Father who prioritizes children has seemingly become something of a social norm for middle-class dads, and spending excessive amounts of time and resources on something else can be frowned upon.

The philosophy behind being a Good Father is that teaching the children about the basic facts of life (both literally and figuratively) and providing them unconditional emotional support is enough to assure their happy and successful lives once they reach maturity.

While I do agree with the above premise, I understand that there are varying degrees of success and happiness. While having Good Parents and a stable family background makes it a lot less likely to fail at life (Rob Henderson has written a lot about this), achieving above-average life success is often caused by parental contribution beyond the Good Father standards.

In his series of essays (parts 1/2/3), Eric Hoel described how aristocratic tutoring contributed to success of many famous artists and scientists. He notes that while elites were able to hire experts for 1-on-1 tutoring for their children, this type of tutoring was also available in the middle class if a parent - usually the father - was up to the task of becoming a tutor for the child. This is how we got John Stuart Mill, Dickens, Pascal, Edison and Mozart.

With these examples in mind, it’s likely that at a significant contributing factor for the phenomenon of genius running in families is that genius family members act as aristocratic tutors, encouraging learning, the life of the mind, and inculcating the pursuit of the higher mysteries in the young.

My idea of becoming a Better Father is partially inspired by aristocratic tutoring, but there is more to it.

Another thing I thought of a lot recently is the famous quote from US founding father and president John Adams:

I must study Politics and War that my sons may have liberty to study Mathematics and Philosophy. My sons ought to study Mathematics and Philosophy, Geography, natural History, Naval Architecture, navigation, Commerce and Agriculture, in order to give their Children a right to study Painting, Poetry, Music, Architecture, Statuary, Tapestry and Porcelain.

I am part of the second generation in the Adams cycle, and I decided I should somehow allow my children to be the third generation.

Here is where I can present my definition of the Better Father:

A Better Father is a father who does everything a Good Father does, and on top of that, aligns his hobbies, self-improvement activities and status games with the strategic goal of increasing the likelihood of his children succeeding in life in the long term.

Let’s briefly discuss the features of the Better Father, as well as some possible concerns against this strategy.

Where Eagles Dare

A Better Father does everything the Good Father does, and then more. This is why being a Better Father is not for everyone. It’s a daunting task.

Nowadays, it’s hard for many men to provide at the middle class standard and reach the young adulthood objectives of building a career, buying a house and getting married by middle age. Also, much of the Good Fatherhood discourse often highlights how hard it is to be a Good Father. I agree that it can be hard for some, but for others, it doesn’t have to be.

Being a Better Father is also hard. Which is good - I believe that men thrive under hardship. But I also think that it’s not good to make your life double or triple hard. This is why the mission to become a Better Father works best for high achievers - guys who are on top of things where it comes to the middle class status objectives of career / house / marriage, and also posses qualities that allow them to easily become Good Fathers (refer to the vast Good Fatherhood body of knowledge available out there).

The high achievers are also prone to a specific type of a midlife crisis: “I worked hard and I achieved my young adulthood objectives (career / house / marriage etc.) - but what should I do next?”. Their problem is that having endured hardships and challenges in young adulthood, their midlife suddenly becomes too easy. Some of the common resolutions of this type of midlife crisis - expensive hobbies, affairs, divorce - are desperate attempts to crank up the difficulty level. Becoming a Better Father is a practical and sustainable alternative to above: it provides new exciting challenges for midlife and benefits everyone involved.

You may note that the Better Father concept is somewhat Nietschean. It is - the Better Father is quite literally the Übermensch among fathers.

With that in mind, if you are struggling with either providing for your family or being a Good Father, you don’t have to strive to become a Better Father now. However, it is worth to reconsider it in the future, once your situation improves - it doesn’t hurt to be late to the party.

Better is (not) the enemy of Good

Even though the Better Father should do everything that the Good Father does, there are some philosophical differences between the two approaches.

The Better Father is focused on his children’s long term life success, as opposed to the Good Father’s focus on his children’s immediate needs. The longtermism aspect may remind you of Effective Altruism, and if so, you’re on the right track: If the core of Good Fatherhood is altruism towards own children, Better Fatherhood is Effective Altruism towards own children. David Pinsof argues that idealistic altruism such as EA is not supported by our evolutionary psychology, unless we consider it nothing but a status game. Focusing efforts on effectively improving the lives of our children rather than strangers in a far away land is just more in line with our human nature.

In his book Get Better at Anything: 12 Maxims for Mastery, Scott H. Young describes several counterintuitive concepts for effective learning. One of them is “Creativity begins with copying” - Young describes how the common idea of creativity is putting someone in front of a blank canvas and having them come up with something entirely on their own (art classes in school often look like that). Then, he notes how many successful artists started by copying the works of their masters (some writers even retype chapters or entire books to “see how it feels to write a great novel”) and how this experience teaches them the basic skills and techniques and unlocks true creativity.

Similarly, I think that a common idea adjacent to Good Fatherhood is that the child is the blank slate “artist” that should come up with something and the Good Father should unconditionally support that. “You can be anything!” is what millennials used to hear from their Good Fathers - “A pop star? Absolutely, you can become one!” - “A World Champion in <sport> ? You can do that, buddy!”. The problem is that they usually can’t, and even in rare cases where the kid is super talented, the Good Father often doesn’t have what it takes to support them. However, young sports champions and pop stars often have Better Fathers as their coaches, agents or producers.

This brings up another possible concern: that Better Fatherhood could turn into a toxic coach / agent relationship, far from the Good Father baseline - a common trope in biopics and teenage drama films. I believe a true Better Father can avoid that by always putting the child’s well-being first, in line with the Good Fatherhood standard, and not treating the whole venture as his own agenda and status game.

While the Good Father allows his child to be a blank slate “artist”, a Good Father follows a more targeted approach of learning skills, exposing children to them (another valid principle from Young’s book is “Fears fade with exposure“) and providing them the opportunity to become their tutor and master they can copy and follow. This allows the Better Father to choose the skills and activities that both resonate with him and benefit his children.

Some may argue that what the Better Father does is covered the “Be a role model”, “Spend a lot of time with them” and “Educate them and teach them stuff” parts of Good Fatherhood. I believe that it’s more of an extension of it. The Good Father sets an example based on who he already is and educates and teaches based on what he already knows. The Better Father actively develops these areas to be able to provide more.

I know some men who can do their jobs, household chores and basic man stuff like car and home maintenance, but apart from that, they don’t have any fun or useful skills. The Better Fatherhood approach can allow such men to grow and develop something more than basic life skills, that they could pass on to their children.

Good Fatherhood and Better Fatherhood adress a different set of parenthood problems:

• Good Fatherhood is making it less likely for children to suffer and fail at life.

• Better Fatherhood is making it more likely for children to be happy² and succeed.

A Good Father raises the floor, while a Better Father raises the celling.

With that in mind, from a moral standpoint you have to be a Good Father, but you don’t have to be a Better Father - it’s an extra assignment.

What to do

Here are a few tips for choosing what to do as a Better Father.

• Leverage what you already have - While relying on just what you have is the Good Father approach, it offers a great starting point for the Better Father to learn and improve.

• Follow your dreams - Maybe there is something you always wanted do to, but never got around to try or couldn’t afford doing it, or something you did when you were young but gave up at some point or were no longer able to fit into your busy schedule alongside your young adulthood grind. Taking up such activities provides more motivation for sustained growth.

• Get creative in the physical world - Two rules of thumb you can use are:

  • Physical > Digital

  • Creating > Learning > Playing > Consuming
    

    While I agree with Jonathan Haidt and his gang about the need to delay smartphones and social media for kids as late as possible, I also believe that when they eventually become social media users, they can learn a lot more by becoming content creators instead of mindless consumers. A Better Father can help make this process both efficient and secure.

• Provide what kids don’t get at school - Teaching kids stuff like math as a Better Father can be double counterproductive. First, the kids will learn that in school anyway, so it doesn’t provide any advantage. Second, early exposure with hopes of nurturing a prodigy can backfire, because if the kid is only marginally above average, he will learn stuff early, and later will be forced to sit bored to death as the teacher covers the same stuff in his class, and may end up resenting the whole subject in the process (happened to me). It’s better to focus on activities that are not part of the school curriculum.
  This approach has also significant benefits in terms of social and psychological development. If the kid doesn’t have extended family or close friends outside of school, the school social circle will become his entire social life, and the standard adolescent status game of fitting in and “being cool” will become his main focus. It it doesn’t go well and the kid faces social rejection, he/she will have nowhere to retreat to (also happened to me). The Better Father’s involved can help the kid join alternate social circles focused on their own activities and status games (i.e. chess club, sports team, band/choir) that will provide them validation and sense of meaning even in the absence of acceptance from the normies at school.

• Consider the logistics of exposure - Make sure that you can either do the activity of choice at home, in the presence of kids, or take them out to get them involved. If you exercise at the gym, you don’t do it at home, and typically you can’t take your kids to the gym until they’re near adulthood. In this case, consider exercising at home.
  Another example is reading. Before Good Fatherhood times, children could see their father read while relaxing after a hard day at work. But for Good Fathers, reading in the presence of kids is not acceptable, as they should rather read to the kids, play with them or do some housework instead. If a Good Father ever reads, it’s when the kids are out or asleep. But how can we inspire kids to read books if they’re more likely to see their parents with a smartphone than with a book?

• Think long term - Another part of being a good father is being able to become a trusted advisor when the kids are facing challenges in their life. Think of the soft skills that they would need and learn them in advance to prepare to pass them on to them when the time comes, such as psychology, social science, business, networking, finance and politics.

• Pull, don’t push - Do not force the kid to engage in the activities and status games you chose to engage and participate in. If they are interested, it’s a win-win, but if they are not, it’s just a single win of fun and self improvement for you - carry on, and hope the kid eventually enjoys some of the other interesting stuff you do and show them.

For reference, here is some of the stuff I chose - remember, you are free to choose anything else that works best for you:

• Music - This checks a lot of the boxes above for me. As for now I sing and play instruments, but eventually I’m planning to gear up, set up a studio at home, start recording and eventually build some sort of an online presence based on my music.

• English - This may not be applicable for most of you, but in a country where English is not a native language, English proficiency becomes a game changer for both career and personal life - it allows to seamlessly browse the international internet and basically become a citizen of the world. I decided to teach my children English as early as possible, along with their native language development and create a partially bilingual environment in our household.

• Social skills - Refer to my intro post about my Humanist Transition. As I struggled to fit in in my adolescence, the support I was getting from my parents was mostly generic dismissive advice like “Don’t care about what other kids say”, “Other kids are stupid” and “Don’t compare yourself to others”. I hope that learning about psychology and social dynamics will allow me to be more helpful if any of my kids ever face similar issues.

• Business - My long term plan is developing business skills such as entrepreneurship and networking. I have many friends in IT, but just a handful of them created successful startups - most of their fathers were either entrepreneurs or high level managers. As a Better Father, I hope that someday I will be able to provide my kids similar support if ever needed.

Lifehack to win

Finally, I want to share some lifehacks that can make being a Better Father easier:

• Reject intensive parenting - The Good Father philosophy is associated with the intensive parenting movement, popular since the 1980s. While there are controversies, I believe that intensive parenting does more harm then good. Rejecting intensive parenting in favor of finding an optimal level of parental effort and creating an environment that allows free, unstructured and sometimes risky play for children also provides parents with more time, which can be allocated to self improvement within the Better Father framework.

• Work less and have more time - As a high achiever who already achieved the middle-class status objectives of house / car / marriage, you are on top of things and you no longer need to optimize for income. Instead, optimize for free time and flexibility. Consider any of the below options:

  • Part time work

  • Contract work / freelancing / gig economy

  • Remote / hybrid work

  • Flexible working hours

  • Demotion - stepping down from more intensive & stressful position like manager or supervisor, into a less demanding individual contributor role.

  • Underemployment - the opposite of overemployment / job stacking.
    On this episode of Walt Bismarck’s podcast, Walt and Noah Revoy discuss various tactics that allow job stacking, including finding full time jobs with work that can be easily done in less than 8 hours a day. While most of the talk is focused on how this allows stacking several jobs, they also mention how it also enables having one paycheck and lots of free time that can be devoted to some important cause, like political activism. Time reclaimed this way can also be used for Better Father’s activities.

  • Outsource and delegate - Hire a manager to do your work if you’re running a busines. Get a maid to relieve you from the burden of household chores. Eat out or have food delivered. Order stuff and groceries online.

• Let your wife become a Stay At Home Mum if she would like to - This might be controversial, however I believe there are at least some working mothers in families that could afford to maintain their standard while living on one paycheck and would be happier if they stopped working. This is not about forcing women out of the workforce, but rather about having an honest discussion about lifestyle preferences and creating an environment where staying home is feasible and acceptable - if preferred. Staying home shifts the balance of childcare and housework which may free some time for the Better Father to do his stuff.

• Mastery is optional - Another brilliant effective learning principle from Scott H. Young’s book referenced earlier is “Knowledge Becomes Invisible with Experience“ - experienced experts who operate on the level of unconscious competence sometimes forget how is it like to be novice in their field. Thus, experts are not always the best teachers for beginners, who can benefit more from learning from someone just slightly more experienced than them. Based on above, the Better Father doesn’t need to master a skill or domain to become a mentor to his child - it’s enough to just be a couple of steps ahead. This way, the father and the child can embark on an adventure together, with the father blazing the trail, descending into the uncharted waters and paving the path for the young adept following his footsteps.
  Note that in the exposure phase, a minimum threshold skill level is required to inspire and interest: it’s not enough to be able to play a couple of notes on a musical instrument, but learning to play a few simple songs well should do the trick.

I hope that by now you have a good understanding of the idea of becoming a Better Father.

I realize that all of this may sound like a gigantic cope, or a loophole invented by a father too lazy for intensive parenting that just wants more time for hobbies. Nevertheless, I believe that when done right, the Better Father strategy can be a massive win-win.

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1. I use the term “status game” a lot in this essay. If you’re not familiar with the term, refer to Will Storr’s book or David Pinsof’s essay, which provides and overview and expands on the concept.

2. One might argue about the importance of and the relationship between happiness and status. Personally I agree with David Pinsof that happiness is bullshit and it’s more about status.