Shame Bad Dads (Starting with Elon Musk)

Musk’s and Trump’s casual indifference to their own families says something about how they view the rest of us

The news item here is that Elon Musk is now the father of a thirteenth child by four mothers (I think; it’s hard to verify or keep track). This is bad news for the republic, and I am going to explain why. But first, let’s back up.

Last week, I participated in a lively Substack discussion with reporter and editor

Ira Stoll

. Our conversation was principally about the prospects of a “religious revival,” particularly in places like Silicon Valley, something Stoll has written about (and that the magazine I edit, Arc, has also taken on). But I got particularly lively—some might say cantankerous—around the subject of fatherhood. I made the argument that if people like Elon Musk were serious about Christianity, as they claim, they would make more time for their own children. Not strictly for theological reasons, but because the culture of Christendom, of the family, of natalism, of “traditional values”—so much of what seems to draw a certain kind of late-modern apocalyptic-futurist conservative to Christianity—also points us toward, among other things, the fairly simple conclusion that dads should take responsibility for their kids.

This used to be conservative dogma, in the 1980s and ’90s, deployed (at its worst) to argue for a shredding of the social safety net, or (at its best) to make the point that having fathers in the home matters. Or, rather, having two parents is what matters—if they are both mothers, or both fathers, that functions just as well, the research seems to show. But generally speaking, the policies we need, and the rhetoric we need, even the shaming we need, would urge dads back into their children’s lives (because dads tend to be the absent ones).

There were a lot of arguments about whether this was to be done with pro-marriage policies, anti-divorce policies, a resurgence of cultural stigma, or various other carrots and sticks. But anyone serious about helping children had to admit that getting dads to take more responsibility was key. These chastisements were often aimed specifically at black dads—often by other black men (Barack Obama, Bill Cosby, Glenn Loury, others).

So where does that leave us with regard to men like Trump and Musk? I am not going to rehash the evidence that Trump and Musk are indifferent fathers, at best. When I have raised this totally obvious point with conservatives of the family-values stripe, they generally reply with something like, “We don’t know how often Musk calls his kids!” Or “Trump’s adult children seem to like him!” To which I can only reply that, if you have lowered the bar this much, it’s either because you are politically motivated not to see the truth in front of your eyes, or because in our capitalistic society, we all simply hold rich and powerful people to different standards. We allow that politicians, CEOs, billionaires—the kind of people who get invited to Davos or to address foreign governments—can’t really be expected to coach Little League or be home to put their children to bed.

Except, why not? In fact, once you have made your first billion and no longer have to work for a living, why shouldn’t you always be home to tuck in your sons and daughters? After all, you can. If you aren’t spending much time being a dad, it’s because you choose not to.

What I am calling for is the public shaming of bad fathers. Staring with privileged men who could easily be present in their children’s lives.

And nobody seems to care, on the left or the right. As Charles Fain Lehman wrote the other day for The Free Press, “Americans no longer want to legislate about what takes place in their own homes, within their own families, or on their own laptops. They don’t like to be told how to live—either by the religious right or, more recently, by the scolding left.” But of course, even if most people don’t care, I know that Lehman, a center-right pro-family dude, does care. I reached out to him, and we had a nice exchange, which he permitted me to quote from. He said:

Vis-a-vis Musk, of course I think it's wrong for him to have umpteen kids with however many women, none of whom he commits to. It’s an abdication of his most fundamental duties as a man and a father, and it’s terrible that people think we should valorize this. Dan Quayle Was Right. But unfortunately, I also think people basically don’t care anymore, because all of Quayle’s critics won. The left demoralized fifty years ago and the right has followed it over the past ten. (Some might say longer, but hypocrisy is, at least, the tribute vice pays to virtue.) So, I have to make arguments in a register that they might still care about—that two-parent households are simply better for children, and that Musk is setting a bad example in ways that will have instrumental consequences, etc.

So what Lehman is saying is that focusing on the individual behavior of high-profile people, as Dan Quayle once focused on (fictional) Murphy Brown, fails to register, so one has to focus on the statistics and the arguments. In general, I think it’s true that focusing on individuals to make arguments is bad; there is an apocryphal story that the Lubavitcher Rebbe would never attack anyone by name, only attack a position they might have taken. That’s also just decency.

But Elon Musk is not just any person. He is an outspoken natalist who parades his progeny around in the public eye. I suppose that I’d prefer to know nothing, or little, about his procreative activity; it would be nice if public figures had private lives. (Although I do enjoy the speculation about his hair transplants—

—because who doesn’t enjoy such speculation? In fact, in the era of Trump/Biden/Musk/Trump, we are actually in the Golden Age of Hair Transplants. But I digress.) I long for the days of reticence and discretion. But a conversation about his fatherhood is unavoidable; Musk makes it so. So the question is how we are, as a society, to talk about his fatherhood? And I think our position should be: Musk should be ashamed of his behavior. We should be shaming him for it. Journalists should be asking, “Why don’t you spend more time with your children?”

Instead of shaming, we get to read credulous pieces about what a good father Musk is, because he allows his children to tag along to various events (like in the Oval Office, the other day).

The BBC wrote:

Long before politics, Musk allowed his children to tag along.

A decade ago, when he was still building his profile and eager to draw attention to his electric-vehicle maker Tesla, it wasn't unusual to see them at events.

As analysts and reporters waited for one unveiling to begin at a Tesla facility in Silicon Valley in 2015, his five children could be seen running through the hallways chasing after each other and shrieking with laughter.

Despite being forced to wait for hours for attendees, the presence of Musk's children created an atmosphere that felt relaxed and even joyous.

It was a departure from the stiff, far more formal events held by other companies for which the prospect of seeing an executive's very young children would have come across as odd.

As the church lady used to say, Well isn’t that special?

Buried farther down in the article is the fact that the various moms of these children don’t want them being used for Oval Office photo ops. And of course the great unspoken is that Musk has no intention to partner with any of these women for the long term, to create stable homes for these children, to give them real sibling relationships—all the stuff that a century of social science shows helps children thrive. Liberals are wary of this research because they fear shaming non-traditional family structures; conservatives now don’t care because they adore, or are afraid of, Musk and Trump.

Here I want to add another data point: venture capitalist Marc Andreessen, who bragged a month after the election that he had begun spending half his time in Mar-a-Lago, helping Trump. Was Andreessen’s eight-year-old with him? (The child may be nine now.) Maybe. If so, that’s pretty irresponsible, yanking a third- or fourth-grader out of school for a month because his dad wants to curry favor with the president-elect. If not, if little Junior stayed back at home while dad sucked up to The Donald—well, what kind of parenting is that? Who deliberately takes off for three weeks out of six, when there is a young child at home, and the parent’s job doesn’t absolutely require that kind of absence?

No, billionaires are not like us. But they should be.

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What I am calling for is the public shaming of bad fathers. This is a tricky and delicate matter, of course. When a parent is not available, it could be because the parent has to work around the clock to pay the bills. It could be because the parent got the raw end (perhaps deservedly) of a custody arrangement. It could be because the parent is battling demons like addiction and realizes he or she should step back from the children, for the children’s good. It could be because the parent’s job—in the military, say—simply requires long absences. Hey, I’m an author, and I have to travel sometimes. I get it.

Which is why I want the public shaming to focus on—and this is important— privileged men who could easily be present in their children’s lives. The Trumps and Musks and Andreessens of the world should be the most present fathers, because they can be, in a way that an enlisted Army soldier or a traveling salesman may not be. They should also not intentionally father children with women whom they don’t care about, or engage in public spats with the mothers.

To put this in perspective, when Musk learned, possibly via X, about this latest child—and the allegation that the mother was thinking of having his baby back in 2020; the whole thing is rather sordid—his response was to tweet back, “Whoa.” Their tweeting and subtweeting about each other, played out in public, with no pretense of love or even a shared commitment to be present parents, is the kind of behavior that, if carried out by poor people, would be held up by the family-values right as evidence of society’s end. Today’s pundit class seems charmed, or bemused. The liberals who, like me, loathe Musk’s DOGE-meddling in government aren’t exercised about the mockery he is making of fatherhood.

I’m disappointed, above all, in Musk and the rich absentee dads. After that, I am disappointed in the family-values right, who have been silent about these travesties. But finally, I am disappointed in the journalism guild, which, perhaps out of some misguided interpretation of “privacy,” has never treated fatherhood as an important quality in our candidates or leaders. It’s too complicated, too tricky, we think. How can we judge Donald Trump—we may be asking ourselves—when we know that Martin Luther King was frequently absent from his family (and cheating on his wife), and we think of him as a saint? Who are we to judge?

Which may be one reason I have never once heard a journalist ask Trump (or Musk, or any other rich dad who seems to travel more than he has to), “Do you worry that you aren’t spending enough time with your children?” Or “Some dads bake for school bake sales—have you ever done that?” Or “Have you taught your children to ride a bike, or to swim? Who does those tasks?” I can see you laughing as I propose this—it almost seems silly. But these are questions worth asking. And I bet they don’t have good answers.

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Meanwhile, how the Bad Dads (as I am hereby calling them) view their own family responsibilities may have something to say about they view our country’s politics.