Roughly one in four American children grows up without a father at home, and birth rates hover near historic lows. Amid these challenges, fathers are often cast in the culture as extras in an increasingly task‑driven portrayal of parenting, reduced to a name on a car‑pool schedule or a wallet at the ready.
On Father’s Day, it’s worth pondering, what does strong, engaged fatherhood actually look like?
Teddy Roosevelt isn’t necessarily the first name that comes to mind. Chiseled into Mount Rushmore, he is history’s picture of swagger and bravado. But in his family life, the 26th president practiced a very different kind of strength.
Letters to his children over the years — published in a volume shortly after his death, as one of his final wishes — show Roosevelt as an affectionate and inexhaustibly spirited dad. From the front lines of the Spanish-American War, off the coast of Cuba, he wrote his youngest daughter Ethel with tales of “funny little lizards.” He often dashed off “picture letters,” sketching animals and even self‑portraits at the zoo. From the White House, he delighted in sharing with his son Kermit the story of the family kitten, Tom Quartz, ambushing the famously solemn House Speaker Joe Cannon.
None of this was performative. Roosevelt saw fatherhood not as time away from public service, but as its highest form. Take his most quoted address: What we know as the “Man in the Arena,” delivered in Paris, was formally titled “Citizenship in a Republic.”
“The first essential in any civilization,” he declared, is for men and women to embrace the role of parent and raise healthy children. A nation that shirks this work, he warned, drifts into “crimes of ease and self‑indulgence.” Struggling with low birth rates, French officials were so taken by Roosevelt’s charge that they printed 50,000 copies of the speech and sent them to schools to underscore the noble calling of parenthood.
Characteristically, Roosevelt approached being a father as hard work and great fun. In letters to friends, he reveled in being a “playmate” to his children, roughhousing in the Sagamore Hill barn for hours: “I had not the heart to refuse, but really it seems, to put it mildly, rather odd for a stout, elderly President to be bouncing over hayricks.”
He took particular pride in their muddy scrambles down Rock Creek in Washington. Notably, he wrote to his children as equals through every season of their upbringing, sharing some of his presidential burdens and the “endless worry and discouragement” politics can bring.
Perhaps most striking is what is not in the letters. You won’t find lofty pronouncements or expectations that they captain the football team or enlist in the military. Roosevelt distrusted what he called “preaching.” If anything, he worried his children chased success for its own sake. Character, he reminded them, “counts for a great deal more than either intellect or body in winning success in life.” Votes of confidence were abundant: “I have entire trust in you.”
This is not the language of fatherhood today. In the modern conversation, dads are often generalized as toxic bros or soft pushovers. Roosevelt provides us a third and timeless way: a vision of fatherhood that is at once strong and self‑giving, principled and affectionate.
Throughout almost nine years as a dad, I have returned to Roosevelt’s letters often. Sometimes it is to hunt down ways to keep pace with my little girl as she flies fearlessly through life. Other times I am seeking wisdom to quiet the self‑doubt that too often clouds my son’s bright and kind eyes. I also reflect on the simple fact that we still have these letters because his children carefully preserved them — enduring proof of a father’s love.
ELON MUSK, FATHERHOOD, AND THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY
This isn’t a plea to dust off the stationery. It is a call to embrace fatherhood as a daily and active commitment. It won’t be perfect. It won’t be enough. And it certainly won’t meet whatever standard the critics set for modern parenting. But we sell ourselves short when we treat fatherhood as influence instead of presence, as if we are only there to advise or optimize. What our kids need from us is simpler and harder: to be their champions and companions, day after day.
In a time when many men feel unsure of their role in family life or society at large, Roosevelt’s example is a reminder that fatherhood isn’t a retreat from manhood. It is, in fact, the fullest expression of being in the arena.
Mike Ricci is a father of two children and a former speechwriter for House Speakers John Boehner and Paul Ryan.