Bluey, Abraham, and "Biblical Fatherhood"

Is Bandit Heeler a role model dad or a betrayal of biblical notions of masculinity?

Parenting is hard, and sometimes, you need a break. In my pre-parenting days, I had always judged parents who allowed any more than the occasional educational screen time and swore I would never become one myself.

Never say never.

It turns out that there are some days in which I desperately need to buy 15 minutes’ respite from exhaustedly attempting to convince my two-year-old that his sisters are not mobile targets for him to hone his already impressive throwing skills and that the dog’s ears are not there to test his grip strength. There are some days when I am desperate to be able to make dinner without the assistance of miniature sous chefs whose primary contribution to the cooking process is to start the empty dishwasher or reorganize the pantry by relocating all the chocolate chips to the floor. In moments like these, I become the parent I swore I would never be and hit the “on” button of the remote.  

The options available for electronic tranquilizers are not promising. There is Cocomelon—plotless, mostly rhymeless and meterless didactic songs set to familiar tunes with ridiculously large-headed babies crawling around a pastel environment doing things you might expect a normal toddler to do as unnaturally happy adults cheer them on in song. There is the Lion Guard—like The Lion King, except stripped of all vocal talent, quality music, animated artistry, and coherent plot. And, worst (and tragically most popular) of all, there is Paw Patrol: the fever dream of marketing fiend who realized that boys like cars, kids like talking dogs, and combining the two could sell a lot of merchandise to parents eager to placate their whiny children. The writing is so bad that the only reason I don’t suspect that it has been produced by ChatGPT is that this would significantly improve the quality.  

Yet there is one bright blue spot in this vomit-colored tapestry. As I’ve written before, I have a soft spot in my heart for the hit kids’ show Bluey—so soft, in fact, that it is the one kids’ show that I would not only willingly allow my kids to watch but even watch myself. After generations of nuclear sitcom families in which fathers are invariably portrayed as some variation of Homer Simpson—a sometimes loveable but mostly laughable oaf whose only consistently positive contribution to the family dynamic is, at best, a paycheck—it is not only entertaining but inspiring to see a fictional family with not one but two functional parents who have loving, nurturing, imaginatively playful relationships with their kids.

By making time to prioritize their relationships with their daughters (Bingo and the eponymous Bluey) and the things that are important to them, Bandit (“Dad”) and Chilli (“Mum”) Heeler communicate their love for them in the most tangible way. (After all, nothing says “you are important to me” in three-year-old more than a willingness to put aside grown-up work for fifteen minutes, drop to all fours, make loud horsey noises, and haul them around on your back). What’s more, by their intentional presence, Chilli and especially Bandit teach or facilitate life lessons that Bluey and Bingo are often not even aware that they are learning (which, as anyone knows who has ever tried to convince a five-year-old to do something that they do not want to, is the best way to go about it). That is why, in my [slightly selfish] opinion, Bandit Heeler is the true hero of Bluey.

Consequently, it surprised me to read in a recent essay by Mr. Jeremy Pryor that Bandit Heeler is in fact not a model but an antithesis of true fatherhood: that, by being a “constantly nurturing, always-present playmate” to his daughters, Bandit “embodies almost all of the elements of the traditional mother, purged of the essence of elements from the historic father.” This, in Mr. Pryor’s estimation, is a problem. He argues that we need to “get into the details of the beautiful balance of the life-giving presence of motherhood and the training, territory expanding, and leadership of fatherhood.” In an addendum to his original essay, Mr. Pryor even goes so far as to argue that playing with one’s kids is a “small” and even “optional” component of what it means to be a good dad.

Now, many if not most will disagree with Mr. Pryor’s premises and therefore reject his conclusions; as he himself acknowledges, “even in the conservative Christian world, my position is a tiny minority, maybe less than 1%.”

My problem is that, on some level, I agree with many of Mr. Pryor’s premises. (For the record, I respect the views of those who don’t.)

Like Pryor, I believe that gender is not simply an accident of evolution designed to propagate the species, and I belief that there are innate differences between the genders. (This belief is due not only to my theological convictions but also because my experience of attempting to raise my son is vastly different from my daughters. Granted, it’s a small sample size, but it jives with the experiences of most of those that I have spoken with). I believe that it’s important to provide gendered role models, particularly for boys, because if we fail to provide them with positive ones, they will inevitably grasp at the negative ones proffered by ambient culture. I believe that our culture is suffering a crisis of masculinity as traditionally “masculine” traits—physical strength, risk-taking, aggression, individualism, etc.—have been vilified as “toxic”, while traditionally “feminine” ones, like cooperation, communication, and artistic creativity have been elevated. (Although it is not the main point of his masterful book, Mr. Jon Haidt makes this case much better than I could in Part II of The Anxious Generation.) In this cultural milieu, many boys (and men, for that matter) can be left wondering if it’s possible to be distinctly “masculine” without being necessarily “toxic” (and if it’s not, why bother trying?)

Indeed, this cultural crisis of masculinity is a big part of the appeal of a father-figure like Bandit Heeler.

By traditional metrics, Bandit is unquestionably masculine—he has a high-prestige job and worries about providing for his family; he mans the grill at barbecues; he plays touch football with his guy friends in the rare event that he has some free time (and, in the much more likely event that he doesn’t, he dreams about it); he watches and plays cricket whenever he gets the chance; he does workouts using his delighted daughters as free weights; etc.

Yet he’s secure enough in his masculinity—and, more importantly, in his love for his kids, which outweighs any concerns he might have for his own pride or even dignity—to break into a dance in the front yard to break the spell that mischievous fairies have cast upon the household, or to dress up like a baby if the occasion demands.

Now, like most fathers, I want to be the best dad I possibly can be, and as a Christian, my understanding of what that means is largely rooted in Christian scripture and tradition. As a stay-at-home dad who likes to play with his kids and has been known to not infrequently break into awkward dance in public settings on command from my kids, I identify with Bandit. What’s more, I enjoy this aspect of fatherhood; selfishly and (at least until now) privately, I have always felt that one of the perks of having kids is the chance to revert to being a big kid yourself and share the magic and wonder of childhood without incurring the judgement of any onlookers (save the odd Mr. Pryor).

Are these two aspirations incompatible? Does the fact that I admire Bandit’s fatherhood style mean that I have turned my back on “biblical” fatherhood? Does this mean that I have become…woke?

To answer this question, we first need to figure out what “biblical fatherhood” is, ideally not just by quoting maxims or general principles but by showing us concrete examples of how those principles are successfully applied in real life.

As it turns out, this is surprisingly difficult to do, because fatherhood as portrayed in the Bible (and as experienced in life) is shockingly difficult not to screw up. Badly. And I don’t just mean by anachronistically applying the standards of today’s parenting fads to the biblical patriarchs. By the Bible’s own standards, when it comes to fatherhood, even the most iconic biblical heroes of faith have feet of clay resting on their marble pedestals.

For just a small sampling…

Noah got drunk and humiliated himself in front of his three sons. Then he cursed his son Ham as well as (inexplicably) Ham’s never-before-mentioned son Canaan, and this curse has been spuriously used by some in both Christian and Islamic traditions to this day as an excuse for anti-African racism.

Abraham fathered a son with a servant girl and then, to avoid his wife’s hectoring, banished the girl and the boy to the desert, where they would have died had it not been for a miraculous angelic intervention. He also tried to pass his wife off as his sister (twice) because he was afraid of local kings, which almost resulted in her getting kidnapped and raped (were it not for another set of divine interventions), modeling an act of cowardice that his son Isaac would almost precisely mimic years later.

Isaac’s clear favoritism for his elder son Esau and failure to effectively co-parent with his wife precipitated a family feud that saw his younger son Jacob steal his brother’s birthright and inheritance. Esau then plotted to kill Jacob, leading to years of estrangement and a rift that never fully healed.

Jacob’s favoritism towards his son Joseph resulted in Joseph’s brothers attempting to kill him, selling him into slavery, and then lying to their dad about it.

David’s failure to discipline his children led to his son Amnon raping his daughter Tamar, only to be murdered by another son (Absolom), who in turn started a rebellion to attempt to overthrow his father.

Solomon—purportedly the wisest man who ever lived and the author of the most-quoted maxims about “biblical fatherhood,” including the famous “spare the rod and spoil the child”—somehow produced a son so undisciplined and so foolish that the kingdom, which was the height of its power and prosperity, disintegrated almost as soon as he got his hands on it.

In fact, in the whole of Scripture, I can think of only two human figures who stand out as successful fathers. Job produced a bevy of children who were responsible, well-adjusted, and liked each other enough that they took turns regularly hosting each other in their homes, and he continued to pray for them into adulthood. (It’s not his fault the first batch all died when Satan made a building collapse on them). St. Joseph, though not Jesus’ biological father, took seriously his role as trainer and protector (although it’s hard to know how much credit you should give someone for raising the perfect child when the child was already perfect.)

That’s it, as far as I can tell. All other biblical accounts of fathers and their children either provide too little evidence to make a determination, or enough evidence to determine that the man in question—whatever his other virtues—was a resounding failure as a father.

Mr. Pryor attempts to skirt these difficulties by basing his entire conception of biblical fatherhood on Abraham—not the real Abraham, mind you, whom Mr. Pryor acknowledges was “not a perfect father” for all the reasons specified above (among others)—but the symbolic or “meta” Abraham. Mr. Pryor attempts to clarify what this means in his addendum to his original essay, in which he purportedly contrasts the parenting styles of Abraham and Bandit.

However, even granting Mr. Pryor’s own assumptions, his arguments do not hold up.

For example, take his first supposed contrast: that “Bandit wants to play with his kids, while Abraham wants to train his kids.” We can set aside that this claim is pure projection on Mr. Pryor’s part since the Bible says nothing explicitly about Abraham training his sons, or for that matter playing with them (although it’s probably safe to assume that he did both.) Even if we grant Mr. Pryor’s claim that the biblical ideal of fatherhood emphasizes training children (and I’m inclined to agree), could it seriously be claimed that, because Bandit likes to play with his girls, he has no interest in training them? I would argue that it is precisely through play that parents train most effectively. Talking at a child is unlikely to yield positive, long-term results; interacting with a child is mutually transformative. By entering so readily and frequently into their world, Bandit maximizes his ability to shape that world and his daughter’s characters in the process.

The remaining eight points of supposed contrast between the allegedly “meta-Abrahamic” paternal paradigm and that exhibited by Bandit Heeler proceed in much the same vein. It would be tedious to go through them all point by point (although I would be happy to do so if any readers think it would be worth their time).

Suffice it to say that, on many of these points, Mr. Pryor seems to project neo-evangelical hypermasculine ideals (such as the role of the father working outside the home to provide materially for his family while the trad wife cheerfully and invisibly mans, or wo-mans, the home front until the children are old enough to be inducted as productive members of the “ever-growing dynamic team” of which the father is the coach) promulgated by figures such as Mark Driscoll, former pastor of now-defunct Mars Hill Church in Seattle onto the figure of Abraham, where the Bible either says little, says nothing, or contradicts this claim. On other points, he makes a false contrast and ignores the ways in which Bandit’s engaged parenting style actually achieves his purported ideal. (For example, he says that “Bandit wants to maximize time with his kids when they are children” while “Abraham wants to maximize time with his kids when they are adults,” ignoring the fact that too many men have discovered to their sorrow—that if you do not maximize time with kids while they are kids, you will not have the opportunity to when they are adults.)

In conclusion, in denigrating Bandit Heeler (and all of Bandit’s real-life fanboys, like yours truly) as a model of fatherhood, Mr. Pryor runs into several problems. First, he fails to realize or acknowledge the crucial role that paternal presence plays in a child’s identity and development, and how a father who is not present for things that are important to a kid (such as imaginative play) is unlikely to be given the opportunity to speak to that child’s life when he or she is an adult (as Harry Chapin wistfully observed). Second, Mr. Pryor sets up a false dichotomy between “playing with” a child and “training” a child, failing to recognize that, often, the best opportunities to train children are precisely through engaging them in play. Third, Mr. Pryor has projected 21^st-century American evangelical masculine ideals onto gaps in the biblical account to create a model of “biblical fatherhood” that, in my estimation, is neither biblical nor a healthy model of fatherhood.

This is as long as any reasonable post should be, so I’ll wrap it up there. Next week I intend to look at what I think a more promising avenue would be for considering what “biblical fatherhood” means and how Bandit measures up to this model. In the meantime, I appreciate your feedback, pushback, comments, and engagement.

A special thanks to paid subscriber Dr. Jon Peters for recommending this topic.