Why Fathers Are More Essential Than Ever

What Adolescence teaches us about fatherhood, manosphere

Since last week, Adolescence has been streaming on Netflix. A series about a boy who derailed – slowly, almost invisibly. About parents who apparently didn’t see what was brewing beneath the surface. About a father who tried, but was still too late.

The reviews are sharp (but glowing), reactions on Reddit sometimes fierce. And the emotions the show leaves behind are mostly discomfort, recognition, and maybe shame. Because what we see on screen also happens in real life – and more often than we notice.

A boy gets tangled in the digital chaos of what a man is supposed to be. And the father – who wants to help – doesn’t know how.

What if that father had looked just a little earlier?

It’s not an accusation. It’s a question.

In the series, father Eddie senses something’s off. He tries to talk, goes along one time, tries to organize something. But the distance had already grown. Not because of malice. But because of missed moments. Because of unnoticed silence.

That hits home, because it feels so close. Are we paying enough attention to our sons? Can we even know how they’re really doing?

These are also questions Adolescence raises, without stating them directly. We only see the consequences.

Of perhaps something like this:

A teenage boy sits on the couch, earbuds in, watching TikTok. A man says: “If you don’t hit her, you’ll lose her respect.” The next video says: “Never show emotions to a woman. She’ll use them against you.” One more swipe: “Women want leaders, not listeners.” He watches. He swallows. And the algorithm learns. And the algorithm spits out something new: slightly different, but exactly the same.

Meanwhile, his father is sitting at the kitchen table. Not because he doesn’t want to talk, but because he happens to be eating his sandwich there. Watching a video himself. Nothing seems wrong. And yet: everything is wrong.

There comes a moment when boys realize they are different from their mother, their first attachment. Not a woman, but a man. And while girls tend to develop autonomy in connection – enduring, talking, listening, feeling, staying close – boys disconnect. They have to become something themselves, become someone.

If things go “by the book,” they then attach to someone else. Someone who sees them and can let them go. Someone with whom they can practice being themselves. Ideally: their father. If not, someone else who can model and live out that role – of guiding a boy into becoming a man and a human being.

But that attachment often isn’t there. Or not deep enough. And so boys, unconsciously, look for alternatives. Stuff. A sports hero. A YouTuber. An icon. An online coach shouting: “Don’t show weakness. Earn respect. Be hard.” That sounds cooler, and seems more solid, than “Be kind. Sadness is part of life. You don’t have to win.”

These boys attach to unreachable figures. Men who never talk back. So they can’t disappoint – maybe the boy already has enough experience with that. Figures who will never ask: “How are you really doing?” But after enough clicks, will tell him that women are partly responsible for their own rape.

Autonomy without attachment is just being alone

Tens of thousands of years of social evolution teaches boys early on: be independent. Solve it yourself. Don’t ask. And we call that autonomy. But autonomy without connection isn’t strength. It’s survival.

Healthy autonomy always develops in relationship. In contact with people you know and trust. Who can pull you back if you stray. Who know where you come from, and whose shoulders you can lean on – and sometimes the other way around.

Without that attachment, boys build their self-image based on what they think the world wants from them. They become a role – tough, smart, skilled, quiet – but not a person. Not a whole person, not someone who knows himself.

And then it’s only a matter of time before that role snaps. Like in Adolescence. Like with Jamie. Like with many boys and men whose struggle explodes outward – or inward. I lost my brother to suicide ten years ago, and I imagine something similar unfolded in him – before TikTok, Insta, Snap, and the manosphere.

Adolescence shows how hard boys search for direction. But they don’t want sermons. They don’t want to be proven wrong. They want to see something. A different example. Someone who sits beside them, even in silence. Someone who says: I don’t always understand you, but I’m here.

What I’ve learned: fatherhood is not a role you have to “perform well.” It’s a bedding. A space where mistakes are allowed. A place where your son knows: I am allowed to exist.

But to offer that, a father must first know his own ground. Face his own anger, his own shortcomings, his shame, his longing.

Jamie, the son in Adolescence, tells during an interrogation – almost casually – that his father sometimes had outbursts of anger. But not why. That anger was never explained. Never processed. Never disarmed. That doesn’t make a father safer for a son. On the contrary: it makes him unpredictable. And that carries a risk of transmission. Fathers who don’t face their own shit often pass it on unconsciously.

I remember when I became a father. I held my son and thought: this is it. But I also felt something old stir. My father’s voice – strict, demanding, unpredictable – came alive again.

I had to learn to do it differently. Not perfectly. Just differently.

What I had missed, I had to become. For him. For myself.

Being present doesn’t mean having the answer. It means showing up. Asking. Failing, and showing that. Sitting next to him on the couch at night without your phone. Saying: “I don’t always know either.”

Because that’s exactly what he needs to hear.

And sometimes – if you dare – saying: “I often felt small as a kid too.” Or: “My dad… yeah. He wasn’t really there either.”

That’s already enough.

Eddie Miller tried to do the right thing. He meant well. But he missed something. And that’s the lesson: fatherhood isn’t in grand gestures. It’s in repeated presence. In saying: I don’t know either. In listening without immediately fixing. In asking the questions you find hard to answer yourself. In saying: “I’ve been lost too.” Something girls and women often manage quite well.

If fathers did that more often – and if sons heard it more – fewer boys would get swept away by a world where empathy seems like weakness.

The series Adolescence is fictional. But we feel it’s deeply true. And that’s exactly why it lands. Because we know that son. Because we might be that father. Because, if we’re honest, we know – we feel – where it went wrong.

Not in one moment. But in the sum of missed chances. Let’s not blame each other. But let’s turn it around.

Start today, small. Put away your phone. Ask your son: What do you see online? Or, even more open: What do you do on an average weekday? Show him that you want to understand – not fix. And if he says nothing, just sit next to him.

Because that’s where it begins: not with a solution. But with presence.

As Adolescence shows us so powerfully: fathers don’t have to know everything. They just need to show up – and in 2025, that’s more urgently needed than it was in Eddie’s boyhood. Or mine.