Lessons from a Raw, No-BS Dad Conversation

Last week four dads and a pastor sat down in front of a sideways phone camera and just started talking. No script. No clickbait titles. Just real life.
What came out was one of the most honest conversations I’ve heard about broken parents, toxic family, boundaries, faith, and what it actually takes to stop passing the curse down to your own kids.

Here are the takeaways every father needs to hear.

1. You can honor the position without giving access to the person

“Honor thy father and mother” is still the Fifth Commandment. But honor doesn’t mean pretending evil didn’t happen, and it definitely doesn’t mean letting a thief, an addict, or an abuser anywhere near your wife and children.

One dad put it this way:
“I still honor my real mother—the woman who raised me. The person walking around in her body now? That’s not her anymore. Something broke eighteen years ago. I forgave the screw-ups she made when she was actually mom.

The demon doing crimes today? Hard pass.”

Forgive? Yes.
Forget? Hell no.
Reconciliation requires repentance, and even then you move slow and keep the boundaries high.

2. Your kids come first—full stop

The moment you become a husband and father, your wife and children become your primary family. Everyone else is extended family.
Blood does not outrank the people now under your protection.

If your mom, dad, brother, or sister brings poison into the house, you cut it off. Your siblings might call you cold. Your kids will thank you later with stable lives and intact marriages.

3. We lost objective morality when we lost God

Every man in that room agreed on the root cause:
When biblical literacy collapsed, honor collapsed with it.

Even the non-churchgoers of the 1960s–70s still lived by Judeo-Christian ethics. Today? “My truth” is king and everyone does what is right in his own eyes.

Result:

  • Dads portrayed as buffoons for thirty straight years on TV
  • “Toxic masculinity” became the scapegoat
  • OnlyFans girls out-earning LeBron while men doom-scroll in their parents’ basement
  • 15-year-olds dictating dinner, bedtime, and screen time

4. Gentle parenting is just lazy parenting in yoga pants

Kids running the house at age four isn’t “respecting their feelings.” It’s parents who don’t want to be the bad guy.

One father’s turning point:
“I spent the first three years focused on work, porn, and whether my daughter liked my Sunday pancakes more than actually leading my family. Took me four years to finally put my foot down and say, ‘I’m the man of this house.’ Best decision I ever made. My daughter behaves, my wife respects me again, and the house has order.”

Eat what’s cooked or starve.
Lose the iPad and you don’t get it back because you cried.
Real love sometimes sounds like “No.”

5. Technology is the new fentanyl—treat it like it

We were free-range kids who drank from garden hoses and came home when the streetlights came on.
Today parents are terrified of strangers outside but hand their kid unlimited YouTube inside.

Fix it:

  • Brick phone locks
  • Bark monitoring
  • Google Family Link
  • No devices in bedrooms—ever
  • You know exactly what they’re watching, who they’re talking to, and you’re willing to be the “mean dad” who checks

6. There’s legitimate hope—Generation Alpha is coming

Every empire has its cycle:
Hard times → strong men → good times → weak men → hard times.

We’re at the end of the weak-men chapter. The pendulum is swinging. Young men are lifting, going back to church, deleting porn, homeschooling, and wearing crosses unironically again.

Your job isn’t to fix the whole culture.
Your job is to be the strong man your bloodline desperately needs right now.

Final charge to every dad reading this

  1. Get your house in order—spiritually, physically, relationally.
  2. Draw the boundary lines with toxic family and never apologize for protecting your wife and kids.
  3. Lead with authority and love. Your children don’t need another friend; they need a father.
  4. Put the Bible back at the center. Even if you’re starting from zero, start tonight. Read it with your kids. They’ll ask questions you can’t answer. Good—that’s how you both grow.

You break the curse the moment you decide you will not pass it on.

Make Dads Great Again—one household at a time.

— The Pancakes With Your Dad Team