The Toxic War on Masculinity Part 3 with Nancy Pearcey

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The Toxic War on Masculinity Part 3

Guest:Nancy Pearcey

From the series:The Toxic War on Masculinity (Day 3 of 3)

Air date:June 13, 2025

Ann:As a little girl, I looked up to my dad so much. I was the youngest of four, but I can remember being scared of the dark, and I ran into my parents’ bedroom. I would snuggle in between my mom and dad, and I remember my dad would put his arm around me and I would feel so protected, and then my little head would move into his rib, and I could feel and hear his heartbeat. I felt so cared for and protected.

I loved my mom. I had a greatly relationship with my mom, but there is something about my dad that made me feel safe. I always wanted his attention. I wanted to be seen by him because he was so important to me.

Dave:Welcome to FamilyLife Today, where we want to help you pursue the relationships that matter most. I’m Dave Wilson.

Ann:And I’m Ann Wilson. And you can find us at FamilyLifeToday.com. This is FamilyLife Today.

Dave:We’ve been talking for the last couple of days about sort of toxic masculinity. We’ve got Nancy back, who has declared war on toxic masculinity. Nancy Pearcey is back in the studio. I’m joking, but the title of your book is The Toxic War on Masculinity. In a sense you have a fiery spirit in you—college professor and—

Ann:—a mom of two sons, married.

Dave:You delve into this; you’ve got boys. We’ve talked about the journey men have been through from the Colonial Age to Industrial Revolution.

Ann:Well, let me say this, too, Nancy. Am I right in saying, as you’ve seen the culture defining and bashing men in who they are and how they’re so toxic, did you feel like, “Wait a minute”? I feel like you’ve said that; she did kind of go to war against it a little bit.”

Nancy:Well, one of the things I think is really tragic is that it overlooks the fact that men and boys are actually falling behind today. They’re doing worse than they did in the past. Boys are falling behind at all levels of education, from kindergarten to college. The average college now is 60 percent female and 40 percent male. Graduate school: more women than men are going to graduate school, and even professional school.

Dave:So what’s happened? Why?

Ann:You’re the researcher.

Dave:You’re the expert.

Nancy:Well, let me tell you more the problem.

Dave, Ann: Okay.

Nancy:And not just boys, but men. Men are falling behind. Men are much more likely to commit suicide, to be addicted to drugs or alcohol, to be both victims and perpetrators of violence. Ninety percent of people in prison are men, and men are falling out of the workplace. By the way, the rate of employment among men today is at depression-era levels.

Ann:Wow.

Nancy:Depression-era levels and we don’t know it because they’re falling out of the employment statistics. They’re not trying to find work anymore and so they’re not counted. You have to count them other ways. And their life expectancy has gone down while women’s has stayed the same over the last four years or so.

So there was a publication called The New Scientist that said the major factor in early death now is being male. So this is the irony that while men are being attacked and accused of being toxic, men are actually doing worse today. And if you try to bring any sort of programs that are just geared to men like Christina Hoff Sommers who wrote the first book on boys falling behind. She called it The War Against Boys. And she writes, “As I tried to get programs for boys, feminist groups would constantly oppose them. ‘No, no, no, you can’t help out boys. We have to help the girls.’ But as a result, there’s no money going into creating programs that are helping men and boys today.”

So that’s the irony of the war, the war on men unquote, is that men are actually doing worse. And perhaps it’s partly because they’re being accused of being toxic.

Ann:That’s what I wonder too.

Nancy:That they’re losing their confidence. I did quote, in my book, a psychiatrist. Her name is Erica Komisar, and she writes for the Wall Street Journal. She said, “I am getting more and more young men into my practice who feel defeated because they’re growing up in a culture that’s so hostile to masculinity, and I’m seeing it in my practice; young men in particular, because they’re the ones who’ve grown up with that negative message. So I’m very concerned about boys. I have two of them.

Ann:Yeah, and we have three. So even as we read your title, it’s concerning, of what’s happening not only to boys and men today.

Dave:So where do you go to say, “We got to change the narrative?”

Nancy:So the biggest long-term solution is fathers; fathers being more engaged with their sons. And that’s a problem, too, because America has the highest level of single parenthood in the world. Forty percent of children in America are growing up with no contact with their natural father.

Dave:Forty percent.

Nancy:Forty percent and it’s the highest in the world. And our media treats fathers as the doofus, the dimwit, the butt of the joke.

So much of our movies and so on. So I got into that, and I have a whole chapter on fatherhood because we all know that if fathers are not involved with their children, especially their sons, their sons are going to have more trouble in school, more trouble with addiction, more trouble with crime.

I used to work for Prison Fellowship, which is an international prison ministry, and we knew all too well that most of the men sitting behind bars are coming from fatherless homes, especially violent criminals. They’re coming from fatherless homes. So what do we do about fathers being disrespected and mocked and ridiculed in the media? Again, everyone knows that, but they don’t know where it comes from. And once again, it’s the Industrial Revolution.

What happened when fathers were no longer working side by side with their children all day, day in, day out? Well, they got out of touch with their children. They got out of touch with their children’s needs, their children’s personalities and skills and talents. They no longer knew the dynamics in the household, and so all they did in the 19th century—you see this in the literature—people start mocking fathers and saying, “Oh, they’re so irrelevant. They’re so incompetent. What are they good for, anyway?”

Actually, that’s from a novel that was written in the 19th century. One of the characters said, “I can’t figure out what fathers were made for anyway.” So you start to see this denigration of fathers, just because they’re not there and so they’re not integrated into the family the way they used to be. And so the long-term solution has got to be fathers.

There’s a psychiatrist, Frank Pittman, who says, “We’re not going to turn out better men until we have better fathers, better fathers raising them.” I do have an entire chapter in the book on: what does that look like practically? Like you said, we can’t undo the Industrial Revolution, so what do we do?

So I do have a whole chapter on men who found ways to be more flexible in their job, find ways to work two days at home, or start a home business. I have one person I interviewed who just left early, left at 4:30 two days a week to coach his son’s basketball and soccer, and his boss gave him a hard time and told him he was coasting, but it did not end up hurting his job. And when his sons grew up, they said, “We want to be a dad like you,” which is a whole lot better than any workplace award.

Ann:Yes.

Nancy:I’ll give you one story from the pandemic, too, because the pandemic has helped a lot of men discover, “Hey, I actually like being closer to my family.” The New York Times had an article where the title was, “During the Pandemic Many Fathers Got Closer to Their Children, and They Don’t Want to Lose That.”

Ann:I’ve seen that.

Nancy:I love that title!

Ann:Me too.

Nancy:Another survey said 65 percent of men don’t want to work full-time in the office anymore. They want to be at least part-time home. And one of my students, her husband was an IT professional who came home during the pandemic and being home, he was able to be more involved with the homeschooling. He was able to take the kids to soccer. He decided he would do lunch every day. He would take that on. He made lunch for the family every day.

His wife, who was my student, she was an opera singer. She started a voice studio and the whole family benefited from the additional income. And when I interviewed her husband, this was the crowning point: he said the time that he used to spend commuting every morning, he now spends praying with his wife. And he said, “I’m never going back to a cubicle.”

Ann:So it sounds like anything a man can do to be able to navigate his job to possibly spend more time at home is definitely beneficial.

Nancy:And millennials want that.

Ann:Yeah.

Nancy:I read a really cool article with a survey showing Millennials want to share both the bread-winning and the caretaking in a little bit more even way.

Ann:I like that they’re doing this. I think it’s good for the kids, too.

Dave:Well, I mean, I think I’m old enough to live through several decades of watching men at work, and there was a time, I’m glad to hear this because it’s changing. There was a time where if you saw a man in your neighborhood at two in the afternoon, or dropping off the kids, you thought, “What’s wrong? He’s not a man. He doesn’t have a job.”

One of my best friends, Rob, lost his job in Michigan, what, 15 years, 20 years ago and didn’t have a job for maybe three months. And he told me one of my best friends, he goes, “I love that I get to walk now in the afternoon with my wife.” But he goes, “I literally was self-conscious that people are looking at me saying, ‘He’s a loser. He doesn’t have a job,’” thinking that the only way a man can work is leave the home, go to an office, go to a worksite, and then come home at dinnertime or later. And what you’re saying is that whole paradigm is shifting in a good way.

Ann:This is a good thing from the pandemic.

Dave:That’s a good thing. There are different ways to work.

Nancy:A little silver lining—

Ann:Exactly.

Nancy:—in this pandemic is that a lot of men discovered that they really did like being home more. I know that it’s sort of anecdotal at this point, in the sense that you can’t say, “Well, here’s some general principles.” All you can do is give stories, so in that chapter I just have lots and lots of stories of men who found ways to be more flexible in their jobs, and who found that it did strengthen their family relationships enormously.

Ann:Well, I’m remembering, because Dave was a pastor and his schedule was somewhat flexible. He would come home early some days, and without a doubt, if it’s summer in Michigan, he’s outside. As soon as the kids in the neighborhood see that Dave’s outside with our three boys, every boy on the block is in our front yard, because he knows Mr. Wilson is outside. We’re going to play some game that’s going to be a blast.

But sometimes we would say, “We’re the only parents out there. Where are all the parents? Let’s play and be with our kids.” And I’m not kidding, kids would knock—13-year-olds would knock on our front door and not ask our younger children to come out and play, they would say, “Hey, can Mr. Wilson come out and play ball? We’re playing down the street. Can he come with us?” And it was pretty sweet, but it also showed me they want to be with him. They want to be with a man. You were always encouraging boys.

Dave:Well, the other side of that story is their dads weren’t available.

Nancy:Yes, yes.

Dave:And you talk about in your book The Fatherless Boys, they were either working or they had left. They weren’t home.

Nancy:And it’s something that the church, I think, needs to think more clearly about. How do we have a ministry to fatherless boys? I think that should be a top-level ministry for churches, because father substitutes can have a tremendous impact. Church youth group leaders and youth pastors, and I have some anecdotes on that too. A man I talked to who coaches rugby, I think it was—a somewhat unusual sport—he coaches rugby, and he said, “I’m doing it for my kid, but you know what? I’m doing it for all these other kids too, because so many of these kids, these boys don’t have a father in the home.” And he said, “I’m doing it as a ministry to these boys.”

Dave:Yeah. One of the reasons I coach high school football for 12 years is to be with my boys. That was actually motivation number one. I want to be there. They’re going to be there. I’m a football guy. I have a background, so maybe I can be on the field with them. But as they left, I stayed. And it was that. I was like, “Most of these boys in this high school don’t have a dad in their home, or they don’t have a good model for a dad in their home.”

I knew every day as I walked down to the practice field, I prayed and said, “God, use me as a dad and a model in these young men’s life. They don’t have a model. They don’t even know what a dad looks like or feels like. I get to be a representative of You to these boys, to show them what a man is.” That’s the, and your last chapter, “The Power of a Man.” Not that women don’t have power. You have incredible power, but there’s a uniqueness that God has put in us as men, as husbands and dads. We can impact not just the family but a whole community.

Nancy:What’s interesting to me is that even non-Christians see this. There’s one non-Christian, a historian, who writes, “A coach’s view of manhood derives from the view of God.” And he said, “Take the polytheistic religions.” Here’s his language. “They fought, they winched, and they elevated military power.”

So polytheistic religions—think of the ancient Greek gods or the Norse gods—to be a man is to be a warrior. He said, “Well, there’s some truth to that, but it’s incomplete.” So he says, “What about monotheistic religions? Well, some monotheistic religions treat God as completely transcendent separate. For example, Islam. God does not have relationship with people.” I actually quote a Muslim who says, “The very idea that God would condescend to have a relationship with mere mortals is repugnant.” That’s how he put it. “It’s repugnant to Islam.” So that view of God emphasizes power, authority, the guy on top.

Then he said, the same historian said, “Now Judaism comes along, and Judaism is monotheistic, but God does have a relationship with people. God has a covenant relationship with His people, so God is a father, a loving Father. To be a man in Judaism is to be a loving father.” Then he says, “Christianity came along within Judaism,” he said, “but Christianity complexified the view of manhood because Jesus comes as a servant leader.”

“I come not to be served but to serve.” And he says, “All of a sudden character traits were thought to be more feminine, become appropriate for men like gentleness and love and forgiveness and compassion.” And he said, “Christianity gave rise to a much more full-orbed, balanced view of men than any other religion.” So I thought this was fascinating.

Ann:Me too.

Nancy:That Christianity calls men to be whole, not to be chopped off, just certain stereotypes, but to be whole persons made in God’s image, reflecting the whole personality of God, and that even a non-Christian could see the difference that Christianity means.

Dave:That’s beautiful. I mean, as you ladies think of a title for God, which one comes to your mind first? I mean, He’s King, He’s Creator. He’s the King of Kings, the Lord of Lords. He’s Father. Jesus was the Son. I mean, does any one of those come like, “This is the one I resonate with the most”?

Nancy:I go for Father.

Dave:That’s what I thought would be true.

Ann:Well, I think part of that—if you would’ve asked me this years ago, years and years ago, I would’ve probably looked at the God of the Old Testament different than the Jesus of the New Testament. I could have seen the God of the Old Testament as being a little scary and judgmental. I don’t think I had a good context of who He was.

And so when Jesus says, “When you’ve seen me, you’ve seen the Father,” all of a sudden, I’m like, “Oh, now I’m seeing the goodness of God, and I’m seeing the Father piece.” Yeah, I would say Father too now, but back in the day, I was a little scared of God, but I was like, “I’d hang out with Jesus.” And it’s because of some of the old pain and the wounds that I had, and the unworthiness that I felt before God. I thought that He would smote me.

Nancy:And let me expand our scope a little bit too, on how the Christian view of God has an impact in other cultures. Because in my book Toxic War, I focus mostly on America, because you’ve got to put limits or the book gets too big.

Ann:Yeah.

Nancy:But I did put some findings from other cultures, because it was just so amazing. The cultures like South America. There was one anthropologist who studied Columbia, for example, very secular person, and she expected to go in and find that the impact of Christianity would be to make men more patriarchal and more domineering. She found the opposite.

She was so stunned. She said, “No, no, no, it’s machismo culture. It’s the general secular culture that teaches men it’s okay to ignore your family, that you become a man because you’re out there gambling and fighting. When a man becomes an evangelical Christian, he takes all his money and invests it in his family, and the family experiences a higher standard of living. The whole family benefits because the father becomes engaged with his family.” Here’s how she put it. She said, “Christianity is the best women’s movement.”

Ann:Jesus was, yes.

Nancy:And there was an even largest study done by a British anthropologist. She went beyond Columbia. She went into Africa as well, and Asia, and she found the same thing. Bernice Martin, I think is her name.

Dave:I don’t know how you remember all this stuff.

Ann:I’m amazed at this.

Nancy:But she said the same thing. She said, “It’s not liberal Christian groups that have helped women. It’s these ‘backward,’ unsophisticated evangelicals who’ve helped women more than any other group.” And she too said, “If there’s anything that can be called an international women’s movement,” she said, “evangelical Christianity is it.”

I was telling you earlier about a New York Times columnist, too, who wrote the book Half the Sky. It’s a bestseller, so maybe some people in our audience will have heard of it; Half the Sky. He, too, says it’s the Christian groups that help the poor more than any other group. They’ll go out and really help these women.

In the book, they say it’s Christianity that has helped so many women be able to counter the alcoholism, the adultery, the other sort of traditional male vices in these cultures. They get the church supporting them. That’s how he puts it. He’s not a Christian, but that church helps them in a sense, pull men out of that secular culture into the church culture where they focus on their families, to coin a phrase.

Dave:I remember an actress on a show that we used to watch decades ago. I knew who she was because I like this show. I remember reading this quote in a magazine that she said she was asked if she was a Christian. And she says, “I was at one time as a child, but I’m not anymore because of what Jesus did to women.” That was her quote.

I remember—this was before social media. Today, I would direct message her. If I could have gotten ahold of her, I would’ve said, “That can’t be true. If you understood what Jesus did to women in that culture”—

Ann:—to elevate—

Dave:—”you would not make a statement like that. He elevated women. He celebrated. He put them in”— It’s crazy to study—you know as well as anybody what He meant for women in that time. And as I think about that, I think that’s what women should feel now when we evangelical men live out our faith. They should feel seen and worthy and alive because we’re not toxic. We are the best thing that ever happened because we copy, and we live as Jesus did.

Nancy:So I do have a section in my book on how Jesus treated women. But it’s also helpful to ask, “Well, where did the misconceptions come from?”

Dave:Yeah.

Nancy:And there’s two major places. Genesis 1, where it says, Eve was created, woman was created to be a help. And we tend to think help means like the assistant. He does the really important stuff, and she’s the little assistant.

Ann:I struggled with that, Nancy, when I was younger, and I thought, “Well, maybe I’m getting that term wrong.” And so I looked it up in the Webster’s Dictionary and it said, “A go-fer; a person who does the dirty work. Someone important tells them what to do.” So obviously, when God created a woman and He said the word, “helper,” that’s not what He had in mind.

Nancy:We have to go back to the Hebrew, first of all. Webster’s is not going to help you.

Ann:Yeah, exactly.

Nancy:But the Hebrew; it’s pronounced “a-zer.” And in the Old Testament it is used most often of God: “our ever-present help in trouble.” So clearly it does not indicate an inferior, subordinate person. The word itself does not mean that, and it’s in some male names like Ebenezer, Eliezer. Hebrew fathers would not give their sons names that meant they were weak.

Ann:Or less than.

Nancy:Or less than. So the word itself, I think it’s very important that we—

Ann:Me too.

Nancy:—explain the word “azer” means an ally, someone who comes to your side and helps you when you’re in trouble.

Ann:An ally. As I was thinking about men leading and loving in the home, the picture that came to my mind: when we were in Israel and we attended a Shabbat dinner and with an Orthodox Jewish family, and it was beautiful. And when the woman, the mother of the children and the wife, lit the candles, which is a place of honor, the husband stood up and then he read from the Torah, or we would call it Proverbs.

He would stand up and he’d say, “A wife of noble character who can find?” And he would lay his hands on his wife, and he would kiss her, and then he would bless her. And then he would turn to each one of his children, and he would bless them and speak life to them. As I looked at that picture of our heavenly Father, of saying, “This is what a man does. He looks at his wife, he blesses her; he sees his children, he blesses them, he protects them. He lays down his life for them.”

And Dave, I feel like you’ve done that. I feel like you’ve always done that to me. You’ve done a really good job of that. You have blessed me. You honor me. You talk so highly about me, and you’ve done that for the boys. You lay down your life every day for us.

And so there might be some toxic masculinity, but our evangelical men that are walking with Jesus, that are seeking Him, they’re the ones that are representing Jesus and the church in a beautiful way, and to the families. It’s marking us, and it’s making a difference. Don’t give up, men. You’re doing it.

Thank you, Nancy, for all you’re doing.

Nancy:Well, thank you for having me. I appreciate it.

Dave:We’re Dave and Ann Wilson on FamilyLife Today and the last three days with Nancy, I think it’s life changing.

Ann:Me too. I love these interviews with her.

Dave:Well, I mean, anytime you get to talk about biblical, godly manhood, a vision of manhood being defined by God and His Word, that is, you know me. That’s like that sets men on fire, that gives them a direction. And when a man lives as a man is called to live by God, that impacts everybody. Not just his family and his home and his kids and his grandkids—

Ann:But his community.

Dave:—but it impacts his church and his community, his workplace, man. That’s why, I mean, I get excited like, man, go be men like God wants us to live and it’ll impact everything and everywhere you go.

I would encourage you get Nancy’s book, The Toxic War on Masculinity. Just go click the link in our show notes; that’ll take you to our FamilyLife Shop, and I’d say get the book and maybe get two or three and share them with others.

Ann:I don’t know if you know this, but we at FamilyLife would love to pray for you. I think one of the greatest gifts that we can give people is to pray for them. And we have a team here at FamilyLife that would love to pray for you. You can go to FamilyLife.com/Prayforme.

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