Somewhere tonight, about eighteen million American children are going to bed in a house where there is no father. Not a bad father. Not a distracted father. No father.

We build prisons for what happens next. We build rehab centers, counseling wings, drug courts, and welfare programs for what happens next. We are the best in the world at treating the symptom — and we will not say the disease out loud.

In Episode 9, Pastor Jay Miller makes the case that the cure is not a program. The cure is a man who decides.

No guest. No hype. Just the numbers nobody wants to look at, four marks of a deliberate father straight out of Scripture, and then Jay opens up his own house and walks through the seven things he decided ahead of time while raising five boys — the truck rides, the bleachers, the dinner table, the vacations he couldn't afford.

Men ask him all the time what it cost to raise five boys.

The money was the cheap part.

IN THIS EPISODE:
• Why "involved," "present," and "supportive" are participation-trophy words
• The $154 billion the federal government spends in one year on father-absent households
• Bucket vs. plumber: why every program we've built is downstream
• The three lies that talk good men into default fatherhood
• The Four Marks: in the room, says it out loud, holds the line, speaks identity
• Why a truck is a confessional
• What a kid is actually looking for when he scans the crowd
• The difference between a compliment and a blessing — and why your kids need the second one