Take your kids camping



I was on the ferry to Isle Royale National Park, sitting on a long, wooden bench, watching everyone else.

There were singles, couples, groups, and families. Watching a few kids slink along beside their parents, moms and dads making sure they had everything in the right place and everyone was coming along at the proper pace, I remembered the camping trips I used to take with my mom and dad.

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together.

We were tent campers. We weren’t as hardcore as the people who do the deep backcountry stuff. You know, the trips where they hike in seven miles and set up their tent in the middle of the dense wilderness. But we were rustic enough for my parents to look down at RVs and any kind of electricity.

Scamps like us

Since then, they have moderated their stance. In their old age, they have acquired a small Scamp trailer — the smallest one you can buy, they assure us — and are constantly apologizing for its very existence, maintaining that they “put in their time.” We tell them that it’s OK, they are almost 70 years old after all. They can stop roughing it.

One summer when I was in middle school, we took a trip out to Maine. We camped the whole way from West Michigan to Acadia National Park. I was watching some old family videos the other day and saw some clips from that trip. We were packing up in the rain in New Hampshire. That’s rough. That video brought back all sorts of other memories from that trip. I remember my brother and I were so into skateboarding and almost killed ourselves every other day.

Dog days

When I was in 9th grade, we took a trip to Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. We went over to the Apostle Islands off the coast of Wisconsin, too. We brought our dog along. Once, way up north, she jumped out of the car and right into a ditch. We thought her leg was hurt.

My parents were annoyed at the prospect of wasting a day (and money) trying to find a vet way up there. Then, all of a sudden, she miraculously started walking fine again. For the rest of her life (she lived to the ripe old age of 19), we always joked about how she was “faking it” on the U.P. trip.

I was getting really into music around that time and brought my trumpet because I swore I couldn’t take any days off. I would practice with a whisper mute around the campsite and sometimes in the car without a mute. If my parents were ever annoyed, they didn’t show it. They were always supportive, even when we didn’t have any room to spare in the blue Dodge Caravan and I was incessantly running the same passages over and over in the back seat.

In-tents experiences

After my sophomore year of college, we took a big trip, the biggest we ever took. We camped all the way out to California and back. We went to Yosemite, Zion, Grand Canyon, Rocky Mountain National Park, and a bunch of other places along the way. I saw a video from that trip the other day, too. We were on the beach south of San Francisco. My dad was filming. My mom and sister were talking with one another near the water, and my brother and I were goofing off down the beach, acting like a couple of idiots.

My parents took us camping because it was cheap. They loved it, of course, they did it before we were born, but I know that a big reason for camping our way across the country in a tent was the affordability.

We almost never stopped for fast food. If we did, it was a crazy treat. Instead, we made sandwiches using soggy cold cuts drawn from the bottom of the blue-and-white cooler in the trunk. It was always half ice, half water in there. We would sit outside a rest stop with our sandwiches, a big bag of half-crushed Lay’s potato chips, and plastic cups filled with water from the drinking fountain near the bathrooms inside.

Some trips, my brother and I shared a small tent while my mom, dad, and sister slept in a bigger one on the other side of the campsite. Other trips, we all shared one big tent together, all five of us. I remember laying there at night, joking with each other, the cold dampness of the sleeping bag on my arms, my mom and dad on one side of the tent, us kids on the other.

IRL or bust

None of us had cell phones, much less smartphones. When we were on the trip, we were on the trip and nowhere else. We were all there — wherever we were — together. Crammed in the car, asleep in the tent, packing up the site in the rain, hotter than hell in Zion National Park in July, sitting around the fire in the morning, freezing after emerging from our sleeping bags in Rocky Mountain National Park.

Some of my most potent childhood memories are from those camping trips. They weren’t fancy or luxurious, we never went to Disney World or any big resorts, and I know I, in my foolish youth, sometimes wondered why my parents were so old-fashioned taking us camping in tents. But they really were special. I know it now, though I didn’t realize it for a long time.

It’s only as a dad that I now understand how much work those trips were and how much they mattered. Taking us three wild kids camping across the country in a tent, seeing all those incredible places. Spending all those days and nights together, just our family, camping. Our parents must have really loved us.

The first disembodied generation



Our lives revolve around technology these days, whether we like it or not. Even if we don’t work in a tech-y field or care much at all about the latest technological developments coming out of Silicon Valley, our lives are shaped by digital advancement.

Take the way we communicate. It’s so different from when I was a kid. Video calling? That was something futuristic. Unheard of. Now my kids talk to their grandparents on FaceTime every day.

If the internet was a one-way street, the Zoomers wouldn’t be much different from us. If it was basically super-TV, their emotional calibration would be recognizable.

Email. I didn’t have one until a couple of years into high school. I remember when we had dial-up. No, I remember when we got dial-up! My parents had one email address, and they checked it every week or so.

Of course, we can’t forget texting. We carry on conversations with 10 different people all over the country. Or maybe all over the world! We also have social media. What is that? Imagine telling yourself about X and Instagram in 1992. What a world this is.

Zooming ahead

The profound impacts of technology are so great, and we are constantly in the midst of it. I’m not sure there’s enough time to stop and really realize how it’s changed both our world and us. It’s changed us all, not exactly for the better. But I think it’s changed some more than others, and I think it’s changed Generation Z (the Zoomers) the most.

It’s hard to get my head around the Zoomers. I know them, I see them, I hear them, but I can’t quite understand them. There's something profoundly different about them, beyond the usual generational gaps: the music, the language, the clothing, the general aesthetic sensibilities. It’s something deeper in the way they think and, most importantly, feel.

All generations have a spirit that isn’t so easily understood from the outside. It’s the logic of the time in which they were brought up, the essence of the world at that moment in history. Sometimes it’s easy to pinpoint direct connections between economic realities, global conflicts, collective anxieties, broad societal changes, and how a generation is, for lack of a better word.

The Zoomers have that too, of course. It explains some of who they are, but not all. At a deeper level, the real difference between the Zoomers and the rest of us is technology — and how they and their feelings were shaped by technology.

Emotional calibration

The emotional calibration of the Zoomers is different from ours. All of us — Boomers, Millennials, Gen X’ers, and any of the Greatest Generation that are still alive — were emotionally calibrated offline. Even if we have since embraced the technological world with open arms, even if we are just as plugged in as the Zoomers are today, the way we emotionally relate to others and the world as a whole was shaped offline.

If the internet was a one-way street, the Zoomers wouldn’t be much different from us. If it was basically super-TV, their emotional calibration would be recognizable. They might have 50,000 channels to watch instead of 35; they might have digital access to every book in the world rather than going down to the library just to brow a few thousand old titles; but our difference would be merely a matter of degree.

8 billion ways to cry

But the internet is not super-TV. It isn’t a one-way street. It’s not even a two-way street; it’s an 8-billion-way street. It’s another world, and it’s the world they grew up in. The real thing that altered the emotional calibration of the Zoomers was extremely early exposure to social media, comment sections, algorithms, and pervasive anonymous interaction.

It’s profound, fascinating, and sad. I don’t think I can begin to accurately explore what all the implications are. I don’t think I can actually explain it, really. I don’t think any of us can. Only Zoomers can do it, but they would also need to be self-aware of all these facts, historically literate, emotionally robust, psychologically fearless, and with a real, strong sense of the worlds before them and what they actually were. That’s a tall order for any generation.

RELATED: Cut the Zoomers some slack

Blaze News Illustratiion

Different cement

I don’t know how to explain all the ways the Zoomer’s emotional calibration is different. But I can feel it, and you can too. And I know the reason. It’s the technology. The social aspect of the internet shaped a different of kind of emotional base for them.

Can it be reversed? I don’t think so. I think they will forever be different from us. Even when they get older and enter more mature seasons of life, they will remain different. The foundation was poured with different cement.

This is why they are, somewhere deep down, something of an enigma to the rest of us. We were raised in an embodied world. The Zoomers were raised in a disembodied one.

Why Hollywood’s ‘Nobody’ is every father today



If you’re old enough, you remember Clark Griswold — Chevy Chase’s bumbling but optimistic dad in “National Lampoon’s Vacation” — dragging his family across the country to reach Wally World. After a trail of disasters, Clark got his family to the gates, only to find the theme park closed. Undeterred, he improvised, fought back (in his slapstick way), and refused to give up on his promise to deliver joy.

Fast-forward to today. Warning: This article includes spoilers.

'Nobody 2' isn’t really about bullets and bloodshed. It’s about fathers who refuse to quit.

In “Nobody 2,” we meet Hutch (Bob Odenkirk), a far cry from Clark Griswold. Think “Vacation” meets “John Wick.” Hutch is a quiet father under siege by a world that won’t leave him alone. He struggles to shield his family not only from criminals but also from the toll the fight takes on his time and soul.

So Hutch does what Clark did: He plans a family trip, hoping to reclaim some peace. Instead, everything explodes — literally. A sadistic crime boss, a brutal syndicate, and one gut-wrenching moment when a security guard strikes his daughter. Hutch erupts, not for revenge, but to protect the people he loves most.

Fathers against a hostile culture

That arc — from Clark’s comedy of errors to Hutch’s bloody brawls — tells us something about our culture. In 1983, dads were goofs trying to make memories. In 2025, they’re embattled guardians. The father who simply wants to provide and protect finds himself waging war against a culture that derides family, treats children as disposable or designable, and mocks traditional marriage as oppressive.

The threats aren’t just cinematic. Fathers fight mountains of bills, debt, and cultural poison pumped daily into their children’s minds — DEI’s racial grievance, the LGBTQ+ lobby’s sex radicalism, and a constant drumbeat that undermines fatherhood itself.

Men are told they’re helpless. But they’re not. A father’s job is to lead his family toward the good life, armed with truth and love.

The 'nobody' every man

Hutch is called a “nobody” because that’s how the world sees him — the quiet everyman doing his duty, not chasing glory. But that’s exactly what makes him extraordinary. He embodies what fathers have always wanted: the best for their children and the enduring love of their wives.

The emotional heart of the film comes when Hutch tells his father, “I just want my son to be a better man than I am.” That is fatherhood distilled. We know our limits, we know our failures, and we want our sons to rise higher.

RELATED: The new ‘Karate Kid’ just kicked grievance culture in the teeth

Photo by Joe Maher/Getty Images

And here’s the twist feminists won’t like. The final villain — a shriveled old woman who embodies bitter family-hatred — isn’t defeated by Hutch. She’s finished off by his wife, Becca (Connie Nielsen). Far from sidelined, she stands as his partner, the helper he needs to secure a future for their children.

Better men

It’s all metaphor, maybe allegory. “Nobody 2” isn’t really about bullets and bloodshed. It’s about fathers who refuse to quit. Men who insist that their families are worth everything. Husbands who know their sons can and must be better men.

The Griswolds made us laugh four decades ago. Hutch forces us to face what’s at stake today for fathers.

I Lost My Freedom, Money, And Guns Based On No Evidence And With No Chance To Defend Myself

When accusation becomes law, fatherhood becomes a crime.

The world changed, and now we homeschool



I grew up going to school, normal school. Public school mostly, but private school for a few years too.

My mom would drop me off first thing in the morning, sometimes before the sun came up. I would spend the next few hours sitting at a desk, bored. At lunch I would guzzle down a few cartons of milk and whatever it was that my mom packed in the crumpled-up brown paper bag that had been sitting in my locker for the past four hours.

Yes, our lives would be much easier if our kids went to school. But we wouldn’t be doing what’s right. We wouldn’t be rising to the challenge the world has presented us.

After that I would enjoy 30 minutes outside for recess and then spend the rest of the day wishing away the afternoon, dreaming of what I could be doing instead. Skateboarding, riding my bike, playing baseball, basketball, or anything else other than what I was doing.

Finally, around 3:30, my mom would come back and pick me up in front of the school. We would drive home, eat dinner together as a family, go to sleep, wake up, and do it all over again. My childhood schooling was just like my wife’s and basically everyone else’s.

Cutting class

But my kids aren’t going to have that same experience or those same memories, because I’m not sending my kids to school.

We are homeschooling our kids, or rather we are just at the beginning of homeschooling our kids. They are finally old enough that people ask where they go to school. Or, if we are out and about at 10 on a Tuesday morning in October, people might ask if they have a dentist’s appointment, or if they are sick, or if school was canceled today.

“No, we homeschool.”

My wife and I always thought we would send our kids to school, because why wouldn’t we? We went to school, and we turned out fine, sort of. Back when we were in school, homeschooled kids were weird. Or at least that’s what we thought about them. Whether they actually were weird or not is another question. Maybe we were just over-socialized and too brainwashed by the system.

Maybe we were the weird ones. These days, I’m starting to think that’s it.

Hindsight is 2020

We didn’t even think about homeschooling our kids until the summer of 2020. Our kids weren’t in school yet; we didn’t even have multiple kids yet! But that was when we first started thinking about becoming those weirdos known as homeschoolers.

Why was that the moment we decidde to diverge from the “normal” school track? What was the grand impetus to think outside the box and decide to forgo the prison sentence known as public school?

Well, it’s obvious, isn’t it? 2020, we remember. But it wasn’t just the COVID stuff or the summer rioting and general insanity of that time.

It was everything else that had been rotting for years in the public school system. The LGBTQ alphabet soup indoctrination, the brain-numbing iPad classes that kids endure, the generally weak curriculum, and the low quality of the average gen-pop student. It’s not only the teachers or the classes that are the problem. It’s also the kids. One bad kid with an unlocked iPhone and open internet access is all it takes to screw your kid up.

A numbers game

We realized that if we send our kids to some school that doesn’t reflect our values for seven hours a day, every single day, and we somehow expect to teach our kids the values we believe over the course of the mere three hours we have together every night, we are fooling ourselves. It’s a numbers game, and we won’t be able to compete. We will lose the battle to the values they receive at school.

That was the big kicker for us. We decided to homeschool for the sake of our kids’ souls, to keep them away from the meat grinder of degenerating modern America.

Our decision to homeschool is a pragmatic one. The world is not the same as it was when we were kids. For children, it’s a worse one. We might wish it were 1994, but it’s not. We might wish that we could turn our kids over to the school system and trust that everything will be relatively fine while we go about our day at work, but we can’t.

The hard way

Our lives would be easier if we sent our kids to school. We would have more time to ourselves. The house would be so quiet most of the day. We would be able to work in peace. We would probably sit and have lunch together without being interrupted, much like we did before we had kids. We would be able to offshore our care and responsibility to someone else — the public school system.

Yes, our lives would be much easier if our kids went to school. But we wouldn’t be doing what’s right. We wouldn’t be rising to the challenge the world has presented us. We would be living in some other fantasy, thinking things are all okay, thinking it’s 1994. They’re not, and it’s not. We would be delusional, and our kids would be worse off because of it.

We can’t deny the world as it is. We have to look it square in the face. Sometimes it demands things we didn’t plan on. Sometimes it’s not the way we wish it was. “That’s how it goes when it goes that way," as my dad used to say.

In the face of a changing world, all we can do is adapt and make the best choices we can with the information we have at the time. There’s no point in hopelessly wishing things were different from what they are. The world changed, so did our plans, and now we are homeschoolers.

Birth is the only ‘gender reveal’ you need



There are no surprises anymore.

In our day and age, we seem focused on making our lives as predictable as possible.

Every single day for nine months, I wondered who it was.

We can flatten the roller coaster otherwise known as life. We can know the weather tomorrow or the day after. We can know what’s going to kill us with blood tests, scans involving complex probabilities, and a catalog of family history. Someday soon we might even be able to know just exactly how many years we have left with 99.9% accuracy.

Of course, it’s easier to plan that way. And I’m sure we’d all agree one of the major benefits of technology is that it often lets us eliminate unpleasant surprises: Nobody ever wished for a more “interesting” medical checkup or airplane flight.

Suprised by joy

The danger is that in our eagerness for certainty and control, we end up eliminating the good surprises as well. Surprises that make you smile, rather than shudder: opening a thoughtfully wrapped gift, finding out you got the promotion, learning that a girl you’ve been thinking about has been thinking about you too.

Remember that youthful feeling? It’s youthful because it takes a certain optimism and playfulness to embrace surprise — especially when it would be easier to just cut to the chase.

The greatest, most meaningful surprise I’ve experienced has been as a new father.

The waiting game

You wait nine long months, planning for the future as best you can. Then one day you rush to the hospital. More waiting as your wife goes through labor, as you do whatever you can — if anything — to help her through it.

Then, in one incredible moment, you find out if you have a son or a daughter. There’s nothing like that surprise.

Today, not many “wait to find out,” as we say. Most parents are anxious to know if it’s a boy or a girl, so as soon as they are able to do the test and find out, they do the test and find out.

I get it. I really do. It’s the most exciting thing in the world knowing that you are going to be a parent, and you just want to know if it’s a boy or a girl. Who is that little person growing inside?

It’s hard to wait all that time, refusing to know when you could so very easily know. All you have to do is call your doctor, and in a few seconds he can tell you.

That way you can buy the right clothes and paint the nursery the right color. And honestly, that little moment on the phone is its own little surprise.

RELATED: Baby wars: Trump voter birth rate outpacing Democrat voters in record numbers

Photos by Paul Hennessy/Anadolu via Getty Images, Suzanne Kreiter/The Boston Globe via Getty Images

Mystery meet

But waiting is better. It really is. We always wait with our kids, and I have to say that nothing in life compares to that one incredible moment. It’s when they arrive. When they leave the protected world of their mother’s womb and join us in ours.

We see them for the first time, in flesh and blood, and we know who they are, or at least one thing about who they are. “It’s a girl!” Or, “It’s a boy!”

Waiting was hardest with our first. There was already so much we were excited about, anxious about, confused about, and generally worried about, that holding off and not learning whether or not we were having a boy or a girl was pretty tough.

Every single day for nine months, I wondered who it was. But I waited and only found out I had a son, in one heart-shaking breath, two seconds before I held him.

God knows

With our second, it was easier. We thought it was going to be a boy. Our first was a boy, it was all we knew, and for some reason we just swore it was going to be the same. We had a feeling.

We felt wrong; it wasn’t a boy, and learning that it wasn’t early one November morning after our car broke down on the way to the hospital was a shock no smaller than that of a few years prior when we found out we had a son.

It’s the waiting and knowing that the answer is known, but not by you. Knowing that someone is in there — and we don’t know if it’s a boy or a girl, but we are going to know soon — is a nine-month tease unlike anything else we experience.

It’s a tension that builds, a question that keeps being asked. And then, finally, it’s answered in one euphoric moment and no matter the answer, it’s a good one, and you just can’t believe it.

The greatest surprise in life is the surprise of life. Babies — they are life. New, beautiful, fresh, pure, innocent life. They are our future. In reality and symbol. And so we wait all those months, and when finally we have an answer to our question, we hold them and look at their little watery eyes and ask them quietly, knowing that they can’t possibly respond, “Who are you going to be?”

There are still surprises left in life.

What fatherhood has taught me as my children move on



My son moved out of the house this spring. My daughter moves out in a couple of weeks, and my older kids are headed up north. Now, it’s just Tania and me — and it’s been quiet. Too quiet.

As I sit here in a house full of space and silence, my mind has been meditating on the reality of being a dad — and what that really means.

As a father, I’ve learned that sometimes the most important thing is simply showing up and doing the best I can — even when I’m not sure what that looks like.

I didn’t grow up with the model of fatherhood that I now find myself trying to live out. My dad wasn’t present. He worked hard — harder than most people I’ve ever met — but he wasn’t there for me the way I needed him to be. My dad was passionate about his job, and that job was providing for the family. He taught me about hard work, but there wasn’t much emotional connection. We didn’t start developing any real relationship until I was 30.

I’m not complaining. That was just the reality. But such memories inevitably materialize as I reflect on my own experience as a father and try to navigate this new chapter in my life.

When my kids were little, it was clear that I wasn’t home enough. And looking back, I knew that my work — this job — was costing me time with them. But we all talked about it as a family. When the opportunity to make this career change came in 2006, we discussed it openly because we knew it would change everything, for better or for worse. We made the decision as a team.

Now that they're moved out, I walk around in this big house filled with all this stuff, considering whether anything was worth it. In the end, it's just stuff. Everything in my home could be gone, and all I would miss are the kids.

The reality of fatherhood

Something I thought — and I think many others can relate — is that you think that your main job is to provide. You’re not needed in the same way mom is. You’re not the one the baby looks to in those early years. You watch your wife bond with the child, and you wonder where you fit in. It’s a strange feeling.

But as I’ve come to learn, you are needed in more ways than just a provider. You just don’t always get the immediate connection that mothers do.

A special season starts around age seven when dad becomes a little magical. You can feel it. The connection is there. It’s that sweet spot before the teenage years, when everything is awkward, when both dad and kid seem to be at odds. But in those years before, it’s golden.

Then, it all changes.

As kids hit the teen years, they start to pull away. The relationship with dad often becomes strained. They turn to mom when they need comfort, leaving dad in the background, unsure of where he stands. And that’s fine. That’s how it goes. But in this phase of life, as the kids start moving out and forging their own paths, I wish things were different.

I feel that loss deeply. As a father who wasn’t home all the time, I worked to provide. But now, I’m left with this ache in my chest, wondering, “Did I do enough?”

Releasing the outcome

The hardest part of fatherhood is when you stop expecting a certain outcome. My wife often tells me, “It’s going to happen. It will all work out.” And I believe her. But honestly, it’s hard not to be caught in the endless loop of second-guessing. Did I make the right decisions? Did I do enough? How can I fix this?

This struggle isn’t just about fatherhood. It’s about life. I’ve spent so much time looking ahead, planning, pointing to the horizon. I could always see the future and strive toward it. But in this season of life, I’m realizing that we also need to release our attachment to the outcome — whether it be over the injustices we see in the news cycle or the things we are wrestling with in our individual lives.

RELATED: How strong fathers shatter a poisonous narrative about manhood — one child at a time

Photo by Kelli McClintock via Unsplash

It doesn't mean we're not engaged. It just means we have to stop wanting a specific outcome. It’s a journey where the road is uncertain, and the destination might look different than what I expected.

I’ve always been someone who could picture the future and work relentlessly toward it. But it’s not just about getting to the destination — it’s about being present in the moment, doing the next right thing, and giving the end result to God.

Applying this to life

We live in a world obsessed with results, with winning, with reaching that end goal. But what if, just for a moment, we stopped obsessing over the outcome? What if we focused on doing the next right thing, one step at a time?

I don’t have all the answers. I’m still figuring it out. But what I do know is that there’s beauty in the process. There’s meaning in the moments, even if they don’t lead to the perfect outcome. As a father, I’ve learned that sometimes the most important thing is simply showing up and doing the best I can — even when I’m not sure what that looks like.

The house is quiet now, but the work isn’t over. There’s still plenty to do. And it’s time to focus on making each moment count.

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Zachary Levi on the Problem with Churches & Hollywood’s Hidden Corruption | Zachary Levi | Ep 1222
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Zachary Levi on the Problem with Churches & Hollywood’s Hidden Corruption | Zachary Levi | Ep 1222

Nike’s Scottie Scheffler Dad Ad Signals A Serious Cultural Vibe Shift

The path forward isn’t paved with more slogans, more division, or more social experiments — it’s built on the foundation of family.

If We Want To Fix Our Broken Culture, We Need More Husbands And Fathers Like Scottie Scheffler

[rebelmouse-proxy-image https://thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-21-at-12.56.11 PM-scaled-e1753120747833-1200x675.png crop_info="%7B%22image%22%3A%20%22https%3A//thefederalist.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/07/Screenshot-2025-07-21-at-12.56.11%5Cu202fPM-scaled-e1753120747833-1200x675.png%22%7D" expand=1]It’s not every day we see men taking their roles as husbands and fathers seriously, especially in professional sports. Yet, it should be.