STEPHEN MANSFIELD
Chronicling life as a new father to his beautiful firstborn child – daughter Thea – Chris Kerr’s goal is to provide all men experiencing fatherhood for the first time with some invaluable tips and tricks as they are learned – the hard way. Acknowledging he needs help too(!), Chris has called on a group of dads he calls, ‘The Father Hood’ to ask them for their tips and wisdom. In this edition, Chris sits down with Stephen Mansfield, a New York Times Best Selling Author and Founder of Great Man. Stephen is a Husband and Father with plenty of great tips to help us be great dads. This article was originally published by Sorted Men's Magazine.
Last week I told you about the moment someone turned up the pressure gauge on me when they said this: “How you treat your daughter, and how you treat your wife, will ultimately determine whether Thea grows up to marry a good man or a bad one. You are the standard by which she will judge any man – so be a great one, for her sake.”
Those words were ringing in my ear when I looked at a two-day-old Thea tucked up asleep in her Moses Basket. She was so tiny. So vulnerable. So dependent on me and my wife. It was an overwhelming moment to be honest. Her complete reliance on me plus the love I feel for her, which cannot be articulated, led to an immensely powerful moment. One in which I decided to leave no stone unturned in order to be a great man and, hopefully, a great father too.
That night I decided to go-back to a book which has already had a profound impact on me – Stephen Mansfield’s book, ‘Mansfield’s Book of Manly Men’. If you haven’t read it, I couldn’t recommend it highly enough. Stephen is also the Founder of Great Man, an organisation that teaches men worldwide the philosophy, art and skills of manly excellence, equipping them to combat toxic masculinity along the way. So, as all of us continue our journey to being great men and great fathers, I thought I would chat to the man himself. Here’s Part 1 of the interview:
Stephen, thank you for joining us in The Father Hood! You run the amazing Great Man organisation and produce a Podcast of the same name, all to help men become great men. What, in your opinion and experience, makes a great father?
Well, thanks for the question. I use a definition that means a lot to me. It may not mean a lot to everybody, but it's my definition and that is that great fathering is assuring the conditions that allow for the fulfilment of destiny.
When my children were born, I saw them as a gift from God. They were entrusted to me. And they had gifts. They had abilities, they had callings. They were this bundle of potential, so to speak, which I use the overarching word destiny to describe.
And so there's a great deal of fun and joy and rowdiness, in being a father and I embrace all of that nobody wrestled more, nobody threw more food or snowballs at their children that I did with mine.
But I also had a responsibility in the serious aspects of fathering. Let me say it in the negative. If my son doesn't have a foundation of faith, he can't fulfil his destiny. If he's not confident, he cannot fulfil his destiny. If he doesn't know how to deal with adversity, if he doesn't know how to deal with being hurt by other human beings, if he doesn't know how to treat women, if he doesn't know how to dig himself out of a dark night of a soul, that kind of thing then he cannot fulfil his destiny.
For me, most important aspects of fathering are solidified in my mind when I think of my responsibility. That is, in addition to all the joys and fun, I have a responsibility to ensure that conditions that allow for the fulfilment of destiny are in place. It was that principle that really made me a better father.
You spoke there about the importance of your responsibility as a father. In your book, The Mansfield Book of Manly Men, you talk about an important maxim that all men should live by, and that's namely that a man fully owns and takes responsibility of the field assigned to them. Could you tell our readers what you mean by this and how it applies to fathers?
Well, I believe that for every phase of a man's life, there is a divinely ordained field assigned to him. Now, this language comes from the ancient world, specifically it comes from the Apostle Paul in Second Corinthians six. In its original Greek translation, the word was ‘Metatron’, which is a clearly defined space.
A great man fully owns and takes responsibility for that defined space which is to say the total body of things for which he is responsible and accountable to God for. He needs to be tending that field, just like a farmer tends to his field.
So, the 16-year-old boy’s field might be half of a bedroom and a job at the local pizza place. He may also have some homework to do, and a girlfriend. Maybe his parents require him to mow the lawn once a week. That is his clearly defined space and as small as it may seem he will tend to it, if we teach him to attend to it and take care of those responsibilities as part of his obligation in the world, and his budding role in manhood.
The man in his 40s may have a house and five children, a job and political connections or obligations that he's got to fulfil. He may have an ailing mother-in-law, and then of course, he has his own body and needs to take care of himself. There is fun stuff in there too like making sure he has time with his friends. God isn’t an evil taskmaster, so the field assigned to him is not all hard work, heavy duties and exhausting.
That is one of the great arts of noble manhood is that we know the field assigned to us for any stage of our lives and we tend to it well. I believe that increase comes from tending your field right up to its boundaries, in other words, right, right up to its edges. If you tend less than what's assigned to you, you're not going to have growth, you're not going to be entrusted with more. If you do more than what's assigned to you, you're going to have burnout stress.
So, the idea is to try to find as best you can, the actual Metatron, so to speak, the actual measured space of the field assigned to you. And that has really helped me It's kept me from burnout. It's made me more productive in business. And of course, your children are in that. So, no man who's thinking about the field assigned to him, would be neglecting his children and thinking he's fulfilling God's purpose for the season of his life. In that regard, being a great man means being a full present, loving father to your children.
That is so true. I guess one of the difficulties men have is balancing all of the responsibilities that come with tending to their field. One of the biggest conflicts is trying to be successful at work and all that comes with that whilst being a really present husband and father. This conflict is thousands of years old – King David, for example, was a very successful King but failed massively in his role as a husband and father. What advice do you have for men that are earnestly trying to balance these competing responsibilities?
I believe that one of the things men are really good at doing when they choose to it is to narrate their work lives for their children. This makes a massive difference when it comes to this chasm between family and work. These men bring their children into their work life. They bring them into connection with it. No matter your work, no matter what you are doing, it should not be some other competing world that your children don’t understand.
What does bridging that gap look like? Tell them what you do. Tell them that if you work hard what it will mean for your family life – ‘we’ll be able to take this vacation’ or ‘we can get this new house we are dreaming of’. Whatever it means for all of you as a family. You need to make sure that your work isn’t the enemy.
I believe that men have an obligation to narrate the world for their children. That’s part of their growth and development. So, narrate work for them. I am a big believer in daddy days at work, where you bring your children into work with you. I am a big believer in the kids knowing who I work with. So now for example, Jackie your Executive Assistant at work, is Aunt Jackie, she’s a buddy to your kids. She’s not some person who is pulling your attention away from the kids every time she calls or emails you with a problem. You know, your kids see her and she keeps candy in her drawer for them when they are kids.
So for you, and your daughter Chris, as soon as she is old enough she should understand what you do with Sorted Magazine. She should understand that you do it for good reasons. That you are admired and people read your work and their lives are changed. And she should know that maybe some of the young men in her classes at school or college can have better lives because of what her father does. She should be able to say that she has met your boss, editors, colleagues and friends. She may, if you get paid for this work, be able to see that this role is bringing in finances for the family and so on.
Then there are some practical tactics. I worked with a very highly ranked US politician who had two cell phones. One cell phone was for everyone, and his other cell phone was just for his daughter. That daughter could call that phone anytime she wanted to and he would always answer it. He even stepped out of meetings with President’s to take that call.
The funny part of the story is that when he first set that arrangement up, his daughter called him all the time for a week. He always answered and so she got to a point where she felt assured that she could reach him. She then stopped calling him as much. She just needed to know that her dad, a world-famous politician, was connected to her and that he loved her and prioritised her. So that kind of tactic can have an enormous impact on your children.
I didn’t know about that tactic when I was raising my kids. If I had, I would have done it. I would have given my children direct access to me. I would have carried a second phone. Now that I do know, I am always committed to taking calls from my wife, children and grandchildren no matter where I am in the world, even one aeroplanes. That really makes a difference, even now when my kids are in there 30s and nearing 40. I really believe in these tactics.
I think the challenge for men, to summarise, is to close that gap between the unknown world of work and their children and family. Bridge it. Let your child see your work for what it is – an ally, even this gift from God for the family as opposed to this dark thing that is always stealing dad away.
Stephen, how important is it for a father to be present in their children’s lives?
I believe that a good man who's trying to be a righteous, solid, strong man for his family, and particularly his children, needs to recognise the power of his presence. The power of him just being there physically for his children.
Let me be frank, I think men too often talk too much. They punish their children too much. They are too nervous in their fathering. I learned this as I went through my parenting journey. I certainly didn’t have it all together when my kids were first born but I had some good mentors to tell me this and so, in time, I realised that my presence as a father reset things. If I was strong, if I was loving, if I was firm, if I was clear then all I had to do was step into my son’s room and he would start cleaning it. I wouldn’t have to say a word. He would just start cleaning it up because Dad was present.
I remember on one occasion, when he was 14, I simply stepped into this room and looked around. I didn’t even put a scowl on my face. I just looked around and waited for him to get ready as we were going somewhere. He said, ‘Give me a minute and I’ll clean up’.
It was the same with my father. He was a military officer and fierce looking. If we were misbehaving in church, he would look down the row at us. We would freeze, not because we were necessarily afraid of being punished afterwards, it was the fact that we were misbehaving, and we didn’t want to displease him. His look just said, ‘Get right. I’m here so align with my expectations’.
My father didn’t punish us much, but we just didn’t want to displease him. It was his presence that made us want to do better.
Let me give you a quick illustration of the power of presence. During the Iraq War there was a prison called Abu Ghraib. Unfortunately, as we all know, some American soldiers misbehaved and tortured captured enemy soldiers. What we don’t hear much about is the solution that ended up stopping this which was that the Chaplains Corp studied what was going on and realised that the Chaplains they had assigned to that prison had not been present. They hadn’t been making themselves know to the soldiers working there for example.
So, what the new Chaplain Commander said was, ‘We are going to do ministry by presence’. All they did at the start was being present. They were present when prisoners were being moved. They were present when prisoners were checked in. They were present when prisoners were being interrogated. The result: All abuses were stopped. The soldiers started behaving honourably. Attendance at Chapel services increased dramatically because the soldiers related to the Chaplains who were there doing their duties. So they were then willing to go to the Chaplain’s sermons and liturgies.
Ministry by presence is simply being present. It’s being where you need to be. It’s being in your children’s lives and emitting the strength, the authority, the security and the expectations they need.
We hear a lot today the phrase, ‘be the change’ but my children knew that my world was orderly. I was neatly dressed, my office and bedroom was tidy and my bed was made and I was the one that did that just because I was a ‘neat Nick’! And so they knew that when I stepped into their room, I expected certain things. When my son was dating, he knew my presence would go with him. I don’t mean that in a mystical sense, just that he knew what my expectations would be of his behaviour, how he treats his date and so forth.
So, when you are a good man striving to be a great man and you're not nervous and jittery and over overly reactive, your presence is the difference maker. Just by being, just by looking, just by standing near and letting your expectations and love emanate, I think it makes a big difference to your children now and in the future.
You mentioned there that your expectations – your presence – would go with your son when he went on dates. Let’s flip things around for fathers with daughters. How would our presence go with them? I have some ideas about turning up at a restaurant and sitting at a table next to them with a disguise but I am guessing that’s not the answer!
Let me tell you a quick story. My daughter is in her 30’s now but when she was a growing up I used to pick her up from High School. I used to pick her up from this big atrium in the school and several times she was talking to this boy. He would be facing her, with his back towards the door I walked through. She could see over his shoulder, and so she could see me when I walked through the door to sign her out at reception. She could see me, he couldn’t.
One day, as we were driving home, she told me something remarkable. She said, ‘Even though he can’t see you, do you know that when you walk through the door, the attitude of this boy changes towards me.’
Now she wouldn’t have let him be nasty with her. That’s not what was going on. But she said that once, when I walked through the door, the boy got all fumble mouthed and called her, ‘Ma’am!’. They were the same age. So she began to understand that just me stepping into the room, and I wasn’t trying to emit something or anything weird like that, would alter boys behaviour towards her. And she gave many examples of that.
So what was happening? Well, if you have loved your child, prayed for your child, disciplined your child, taught your child, sacrificed for your child then of course you have a Godly authority in their life. But it was kind of cute, a little lesson for her that several times a boy would be talking to her. One time a boy actually stepped several feet back from her when I walked in the room. She said, ‘it was kind of like, ‘uh-oh, Mufusa is in the house’ and even though he couldn’t see you, he was feeling something different had just happened.
I believe that is real. I think that this really happens if we do our best to be great men, and great dad’s to our daughters.
So, there you go – hopefully that will help you!
I love it. ‘Watch out son, big Mufusa is in the house, so you better treat Thea well’. I probably shouldn’t call myself Big Mufusa though or she won’t let me anywhere near her social situations out of embarrassment! You talk about the importance of a father’s presence but what about the dads out there who grew up without their dads. They often have nobody to model their fathering on. What advice do you have for men in that position? How can they learn how to be great fathers?
That’s a very important question. Two things come to mind. First, there’s a statistic from a US study that has just come out after years of research. It tells us that even if a young man does not have a father in the home, other men who are nearby – Uncles, Coaches, Clergy – they can an enormous difference to the current and future prospects of that young man. It’s as much as 85% of a positive difference, which is very encouraging because otherwise, we might conclude that a young man who doesn't have a father in the home, would really struggle as the data suggests.
This good news leads me to my second point. I am a big believer in the idea that men who want to excel, who want to be good and noble men, need to seek out mentors. Now the problem for us is that we have this Greco-Roman image of mentoring, sitting under trees in a toga speaking to Socrates or what have you. That’s not what I mean. It’s going to be something like going for a hamburger with another dad you know that is a great mentor for their sons in sports or respect for their mother. Or, a guy you met who has taught their kids how to handle finances – earning allowances, saving and giving. Go grab a bite to eat with them and ask them how they taught them that.
I still do this, and I am in my early 60’s. I will see a man who has some aspect of fathering or manhood that I don’t have down and I will say, ‘Can I buy you a steak whilst we talk about this thing.’ Now, they may go on for more than one meal. Watch out – people love steak!
I recently sold a house in Nashville, Tennessee, and I didn't know what I was doing. And I got a guy who knew what he was doing to mentor me. I'm a big believer in that. So, in this area of fathering, you're not doomed and cursed because you may not have had the perfect or the ideal father. My father was a good man. But he was like general Pat, he was a military man. And he was tough and famous, but not intimate. You understand what I mean? So, when I became a father, I learned this idea of going after mentors and it made a massive difference.
So, my advice is take the best you can from the Father you had, take the best you can from the men around you, older brothers, uncles, men in the community, and then go after mentors. Be bold, take them out for a bite to eat. It doesn't have to cost a lot. Sometimes your entire world can be turned around in two hours due to advice from a good man.
Stephen, all of the studies on parenting talk about the importance of a good marriage between Dad and Mum for child development. What strategies do you have to maintain a loving healthy marriage with your wife?
Well, it's so many things. I teach men that they have a genuine gift for vision. When they do aptitude studies they find out that women are superior in all areas of aptitude, and we have to stop and grieve that for a moment, except for two: Abstract thought and aggression.
So, generally, men have an ability to envision and see what’s not there more than women can. And so I think men need to fight that battle for their marriage. You know, we get married and we start seeing each other naked and we start seeing each other in our underwear. We start seeing each other with curlers in our hair and carrying extra weight or what have you. A man has got to fight to see his wife as his queen and in the glorious terms that he was feeling when he first started dating her.
And so there are many tactics to be engaged in here. I have a friend who goes around teaching that their, ‘ain’t no romance without finance’. He’s kind of joking but his point is you have got to spend money, you have got to love and you have got to give gifts and you have to figure out what means a lot to them. Then you have to invest time to do these things for her.
I think the most important thing to me, and I have heard many other men say the same, is that in order to maintain that fiery, wonderful, passionate, respectful love, that a man ought to have for a woman, he's got to do work in his mind and his soul to see her in the highest sense. Even if she's gained 50 pounds, and even if she's a little bit embittered by something that's happened, and even if she's not the best cook, or whatever negatives we might want to lay on this fictional woman. He can still see her as his wife whenever he can still be enchanted by her, he can still love her and remember things and, and who knows, maybe start walking with her so that she loses those 50 pounds if that’s what she wants to do. But my point is that he's got to see her in the highest sense. And that to me, and for many of us, has been one of the real keys to a glorious marriage.
Sometimes I see great men, great husbands, great dads do something that tears apart their family, having a devastating impact on their children. That is, they have an affair. I am big fan of your book, the ten signs of a leadership crash which is essentially a guidebook to stopping men from making huge immoral mistakes like this. Could you point out which one of the 10 you think is the most important for fathers to ensure that they stay on the right path in their marriage?
When it comes to fathers, I’d have to say that the most critical of the ten is about the ‘third world’. Now, I am not talking about third world countries here. I am describing the fact that men who are leaders who then go on to have a moral crash, often created a third world. A third world is somewhere other than home or work, where they can go to escape from the pressures and difficulties of work and home. It can be an apartment in Paris, it can be a hunting lodge, it can be the private jet or a friends place in a different city. I mean, I have heard all sorts of stories. But that third world is a place where you start orientating your life and your pleasures somewhere away from home, and away from work.
These world’s get created if I am unhappy at work or under immense pressure or if things are not good at home. It can be as simple as a seat at the end of your local bar. The point is, you go somewhere to destroy your life and to give yourself to your addictions. Often those addictions involve another woman or women. So that’s where men start scheduling more business trips than are really necessary, or they go to stay in their apartment more than they actually need to so that they can see what’s her name.
So, I would have to say that for fathers, part of whether you are going to be a great father or not, is that you cannot be engaged in the kind of immoral behaviour we have just analysed. Probably the biggest one to avoid is running from home by hiding at the golf course or hiding at the at the dinner club or hiding at whatever pleasure spot where you're going to misbehave. Now, it’s good to have hobbies. But normally the misbehaving happens for men when they create a third world that’s out of the scrutiny of their company and not around their wife. Men do this more than women.
Now, I have some third worlds in my life but they are physical third worlds, not moral ones. I’m taking my wife with me, I am taking my kids with me, I am taking people from my business with me. I’m not using it as an escape. I often insist leaders take their wives to their apartment in Paris for example, or to meet their friends at the golf club, or where possible, to join them on business trips. It welds the three worlds together.
So, weld yourself to your family and you know what, make it a joy! Get the bitterness with your spouse solved and if things aren’t good at home, fix it and make it the place you look forward to going to for rest and fun and rowdiness. And sure, have the cocktail or whatever else it is that you want to enjoy life, but don’t let it come at the expense of your family. Don’t rush to a third world where you end up destroying both your home life and your business. That’s what men are susceptible to do
That’s so important, thanks Stephen. I want to take you back to the day before your first child was born. Knowing all that you know now about being a father, what advice would you give to that young Stephen?
You know, I thank God, I didn't make too many big, huge mistakes. But there was that I really wish that I could go back and redress and so this is what I would say to that 28-year-old Stephen Mansfield, when my first child was born.
I understood at that time that my wife would be the primary parent to my children early on, that's just natural. Then, as they get older, there’s a gravitation to the father especially in the case of a boy. In my mind, my son would need me more when he was in his adolescent years. So, I loved my son, I wrestled with my son, I taught my son and we were close but I was a very busy man at that time, I was running a large organisation. And so I didn’t end up beginning to pull my son into manhood until later than I should have. Really, I didn’t start this process until he was in his adolescence.
Now, I am not saying that was too late. But, given the unique wiring of my son and given the his great gifts, I think I should have started that process sooner. As soon as he was able, maybe as early as five-years-old, I would have said, ‘we are going to go on a trip this weekend. Just you and me, we’ll light a fire and you know, do whatever – go to a State Park. And we are going to have some man time. We’re going to talk on the way, we’re going to wrestle or we might stay up all night, who knows. We’ll talk about anything we need to talk about bodies if we need to or if you have questions about God or why Mom is so weird(I’m just joking!) but I would have begun to pull him in a bit earlier. I probably waited half a decade too long.
I loomed large in his life because I had a prominent role. It’s not like I abandoned him to his mother, you know, you belong to mom. I was just really busy. I was grateful that she was so active. But I missed some really good mentoring, and some key shaping bonding years, at a deeper level, because I didn't pull him into my world and say, ‘well, why don't you come overseas with me?’ Why couldn't he have done that at the age of eight, everybody would have understood as long as I wasn't going anywhere dangerous. Pull him into my world do some of the, what I was talking about earlier narrating my job more or letting him see it more.
So that's a mistake that I made. I would say to that younger version of me, ‘look, you you've got this idea that you need to wait until your son is 13 or something. But really, you can begin to pull him into a unique man world as early as possible for he'll get it, He'll love it. And given the unique wiring of your son, you need to do that. That's the change I would make.
One final question Stephen. Obviously, you are doing some incredible work with the Great Man organisation. How are things going? What are the plans, the exciting things you're doing to help men become great men, which is really, really needed in the world as it is now?
I appreciate you asking that. We are doing some fundraising right now. But obviously, our main thrust up till now has been books, podcasts, things of that nature. And that's gone very, very well. They've moved well and they've sold well.
We've translated them into the into Spanish, and they're going into Latin America, which we're real concerned about. There's a lot of a lot of challenges for noble manhood in Latin America.
But we're also planning to do a big international conference here probably in 18 months to two years, probably in Nashville, since it's easy to reach Nashville, maybe DC. And we also are going to produce more videos. We're developing that. We also want to expand the literature outreach, and we were concerned that in some parts of the world that don't have any Christian literature for men, and so we'll continue to translate continue to rework.
And then one of the things we're doing is, we are working with some universities to develop an academic minor. In the US, you have an academic major and an academic minor. So, I majored in history and I minored in English, for example. But we're trying to develop an accredited academic minor, that would be in men's studies. Because if you're going to coach if you're going to be in the military, if you're going to be in medicine, if you're going to be whatever, higher education, why not an emphasis on men, psychology, men's law, men's physiology, etc. That helps you with one of quite frankly, in the Western world, one of the most troubled segments of society.
The statistics are all on a downward trend for manhood and men. I have an academic role at a university and I think that academics are important for shaping culture so what we're doing is we're developing the programmes and talking to some universities about doing this. We are doing it online, which means other universities could pick it up without really having to spend much money. It would extend men's studies and have a non-political agenda, you know, kind of men's programme and all the categories that I just described. We're very excited about that. Because that, of course, can make a difference over generations.
A huge thanks to Stephen Mansfield for his wisdom and time – be sure to check out his work at www.greatman.tv.