Not long ago, I joined my wife in the kitchen after work. The sun was out, and the kids came running, asking me to play outside. I brushed them off, and as they left the room, my wife knowingly asked how I was doing.
The short answer, I told her, is that I don’t really know, and I haven’t known for a while. Maybe it’s just a busy season at work, or the fact that our toddler’s internal alarm goes off at 2 a.m. most nights, or some deeper spiritual issue. But whatever the cause, there’s this nagging discontentment I can’t seem to get beyond.
Like many fathers of my generation, I’m trying to be an engaged dad who blesses and delights in my children. I want to see my children healthy, loving others, and generally thriving. Most of all, I want them to have a relationship with Jesus, and I worry over statistics that say two-thirds of young adults who grew up in church no longer want to attend. Will my kids age into the nearly 40 percent of Americans under 30 who identify as religious “nones”? And there are other huge questions—with potential impact on my kids’ faith and well-being—I feel obliged to answer: Should we live in the city? What kind of school is best? How much screen time is too much?
Fatherhood is a weighty calling in any time or place, but numbers and questions like these reinforce that reality to me. I suspect I’m not alone in this and you or the dads in your life may feel the same weight.
As I’ve been chewing this over, I’ve tried to sort out how much of this experience is about factors outside my control (or yours).
On the economic front, for instance, there’s rising precarity across a difficult job market: In 2025 alone, 1.2 million American workers were laid off, and the layoff count is ticking up for 2026 as companies blame artificial intelligence and economic uncertainty for these moves. Other employers have avoided layoffs, but only by reducing or eliminatingparental leave, other paid time off, and retirement benefits.
Even fathers who’ve stayed employed may be feeling stuck or regretful over career paths left untraveled—and they’re still dealing with the pressure of steadily rising prices for groceries, rent, mortgages, and more. As any father well knows, an economy like this can strain your marriage and change where you live, where your kids go to school, even how many children you can afford to have. For me, at least, these pressures too often lead to a single, recurring conclusion: I should be making more money.
I know, of course, that God cares for me and for my family’s welfare (Matt. 6:25–26). And I know there’s wisdom in living within my means (Prov. 10:5). But it can be hard to shake the feeling that it’s my responsibility to ease the financial pressure I see—to figure it all out myself instead of trusting in God, confiding in my wife, and leaning on my church, extended family, and friends.
The temptation I experience when I’m obsessing over all this is to go it alone. Isolation and stress aren’t unique to men, of course, but there’s a reason you hear about the “male loneliness epidemic”: Men are less likely to talk about our fears and mental health struggles and four times more likely than women to take our own lives.
For those who know and love fathers in situations like mine, then, let me recommend that you not take silence to mean all is well. For wives, I encourage you to actively ask your husband about his career and his financial and spiritual goals for your family—and whether they’re going unmet.
For friends, it can feel awkward to begin a serious conversation if you don’t have a history of talking that way, but don’t let that dissuade you. Go for a walk, have a bonfire, or make a phone call and see how your friend is doing.
For parents of adults, especially new dads, fathers still need fathers and mothers of their own. Your son may have a good job, a higher income than you had at his age, and beautiful children. Even so, check in.
And for children, even young ones: You may not (yet) understand what your dad is going through. But he loves you and wants to talk to you, even if—as I have—he sometimes brushes you off.
Finally, for fellow fathers, if you don’t know what to pray, you can borrow a prayer from others. Here’s one from Every Moment Holy that I come back to again and again:
I am
anxious over what I know,
and what I do not know,
over what I feel responsible for,
and what I cannot control. …Sometimes I cannot even know
and name the reasons why my
thoughts and heart are so unsettled;
and yet, I am all the more
anxious and troubled
for that.And when I am in this place I cannot
soothe myself. I cannot speak any
meaningful peace to my own heart
once these fretful feelings overtake me,
once my sense of self begins to fray. …In such moments I need you, O Christ,
to speak into those agitated
waters of my soul,
calling them to calm.
Speak now O Christ!
Quiet my anxieties.
Still my soul.
God doesn’t promise ease, security, or a single path in life (1 Cor. 7:17–20), but he does give us peace (John 14:27) and asks for our trust and confidence, “for God is our refuge” (Psalm 62:8).
Jacob Zerkle is a husband, father of three, and attorney in the Chicago area.
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