A recent TikTok video posted to X is ostensibly the work of a white mother explaining to her 10-year-old the difference between a Democrat and a Republican. The woman claims that her child asked what differentiated the two and that she explained it by using an analogy involving the homeless. “What is the first thing you’d do if you met a homeless person?” she asks. “I’d buy them something to eat,” the boy supposedly responds. That answer turns into a discussion with mom about alleged partisan differences. Republicans, she claims, are “disgusted” by the homeless person and unlikely to do anything because their politics are almost always driven by “selfish” interests.” They stand in contrast to Democrats who — like her “empathetic, sweet” ten-year-old — “love all human beings” and “want everybody to have the same rights.” (A link to the video can be found below.)

Commentators on the video reacted by questioning whether a ten-year-old really talks politics with his mother and has such generous contact with homeless people. In today’s hyper-partisan world, perhaps in fact they do. There are certainly many cities, especially West Coast cities, where the visibility of homeless encampments are facts of life to urban kids. And while some might consider the differences this woman sketches to be straw men, the superficiality of much contemporary American political discourse suggests straw men are well represented in public conversation.

I’m not going to get into the authenticity of the video other than to say that in the America in which we live, I cannot say it’s implausible. Social media is a good street-level insight into the “thinking” (a term loosely applied) of the average American about politics. I, however, want to argue two things likely unmentioned among reactions to this video.

First, I am not surprised this is a woman’s take. I wonder how many fathers, if asked the same question by their sons, would have framed the issue this way. That is not to disparage mothers. It is, rather, to note the difference between maternal and paternal approaches to reality.

I am certain this will elicit howls from the “anti-patriarchy” crowd, but I value the insight of the late Prof. Maria Braun-Gałkowska, a professor of psychology at the Catholic University of Lublin, about the role of fathers in a child’s development. A mother generally gives a child the surety of a loving and protective domestic environment, while a father is often the one who exposes a child to the world beyond the familial hearth. Because he is a father, he cares about his child, but because he is a man, he seeks to connect the child with the larger world in a more objective, less emotional manner. That frequently means letting the child experience pushback and challenge from that world, the fact of risk.

The French poet Charles Péguy captures this idea when, in his poem “Freedom” (here), he presents God speaking as a father teaching his boy how to swim. He knows he has to hold him up and support him, lest the lad become afraid and take an excessive gulp of water. He also knows that unless he lets go, the boy will never learn how to swim. The boy must reckon with the real risks and dangers of water. The analogy extends to the whole of the moral life:

And the mystery of my government towards him and towards his freedom.
If I hold him up too much, he is no longer free
And if I don’t hold him up sufficiently, I am endangering his salvation.
Two goods in a sense almost equally precious.
For salvation is of infinite price.
But what kind of salvation would a salvation be that was not free?

Growing up means realizing not everyone is always driven by purely benevolent motivations, and that seeing the world through rose-colored glasses can be distortive. It’s often a father that hones his child’s skills in critically looking at the world. The modern marginalization of fatherhood skews a child’s perspective on the real world.

Second, while a ten-year-old still has (or should have) a very protected domestic environment, I’d like to revisit the “empathetic, sweet” lad in four to five years after a real summer job. After experiencing the “sweat of his brow” from pushing a lawn mower or other landscaping work during that climate Armageddon time of the year hitherto known as “summer,” young people — now aware of what it takes to make a dollar — likewise become more questioning about the need of every hand outstretched for the fruits of one’s hard labor. Once one discovers what it takes to buy that takeout by the work of one’s hands, one begins to have a less naïve approach toward other claimants wanting a free lunch. Just as we have lost something in the marginalization of fatherhood, so we have also lost something in the decline of the summer job. (For more on this, see here.)

Liberal white middle-to-upper-class women, especially in the suburbs of coastal big cities, are the one firm demographic still in the Democratic camp. “Gender gaps” have been observed for decades, and political mothering may be one of the few ways Democrats still reach younger men. Modern “parenting” has turned many young peoples’ summers into back-to-back camps to “discover one’s self,” displacing the former summer job — to everyone’s detriment.

A TikTok video may present politics as a contest between “empathetic” Democrats and “selfish” Republicans. A Catholic anthropology reminds us that raising children requires more than sentiment. It requires fathers who teach that freedom involves risk, and it requires real work that teaches the dignity of earning. Without both, children may remain “empathetic” but also naïve.

[A link to the abovementioned TikTok video is here.]