Dr. Anthony Bradley of the King’s College has long been a champion of the importance of fathers, not only to children, but also to society as a whole. Responding recently to a truly horrific story of a child murder last year, Bradley recently tweeted, “As I track male teen murderers this summer, one variable stands out: dad deprivation. Dad-deprived boys put us all at risk. I don’t understand why nonprofits, churches, and social justice organizations don’t focus on reaching unmarried fathers. Fathers are crime prevention.”

With so many voices in our culture content to show dads as pointless or useless oafs or even worse, both wider society and the Church continue to do a poor job of highlighting the centrality of dads to human flourishing. As Ryan Anderson has put it, kids don’t just need parents, they need mothers and fathers. Trying to live without either one isn’t just bad for kids. It’s bad for society.