The rise of the so-called ‘manosphere’ has provoked intense debate, with online influencers attracting large audiences of boys and young men through a message centred on masculinity, status and sexual success. Critics have been quick to condemn its excesses, while others have sought to understand its appeal. One factor in its rise remains underexplored: the role of fatherlessness in shaping the outlook of many of its leading figures and followers.
The current discourse often underplays the pervasive absence of fathers that haunts the lives of many within the manosphere. This, in turn, echoes a wider cultural shift away from the familial structures and model of masculinity once sustained by Christianity.
