1. A Necessary Premise I have never believed in conspiracy theories. I don’t think that behind every social change there is a hidden hand, nor that every cultural transformation stems from a deliberate plan. I believe, rather, in the complexity of historical processes: in the layering of causes, in the power of unforeseen events, in the chaotic interplay of intentions and omissions. And precisely for this reason, what I am about to say does not arise from prejudice, but from a clear-eyed observation. Today, the figure of the father—especially the present, affectionate, and consistent father—is being progressively marginalized. Not by chance. But neither by necessity. It’s as if the system no longer needs fathers. Or, more radically, as if it has begun to see them as an obstacle. A hindrance to be removed, to ease the transition toward a new model: a fluid family, untethered from defined roles, from stable bonds, from enduring points of reference. A model where everything is reversible, temporary, negotiable. And where the father—with his inclination toward continuity, responsibility, protection—represents the last bulwark to be dismantled. Carefully. Methodically. With silent determination. 2. The Patriarchal Family Under Scrutiny For millennia, the family was built around a central pillar: the father. A figure of authority, a normative reference point, the guarantor of the transmission of name, role, and boundaries. That model—the patriarchal family—had many variations, some more rigid or oppressive than others. But it had a clear symbolic center: the father embodied law, order, and responsibility. It is right that such a model has been questioned. Too often, it produced suffering, exclusion, and unbearable asymmetries. It silenced the voices of mothers, reducing children to passive recipients of decisions imposed from above. No blind nostalgia can ignore these flaws. But in the rush to dismantle paternal authority, something has been lost. Power was torn down, but no balance was built in its place. The figure of the father was delegitimized, but no new point of reference was found. Necessary critique was confused with systemic erasure. And so today, the father is not merely a figure in crisis: he has become an uncomfortable presence, because he represents what resists the current. A symbolic barrier. A reminder of strong relationships, of stable roles, of binding ties. And this—in a society dominated by the creed of fluidity, the cult of transience, the religion of short-term bonds—is unacceptable. 3. From a Father-Centered Society to One That Dismisses Him For centuries, society found in the family its first nucleus of cohesion. And in that family, the father was the symbolic cornerstone: the one who gave shape, direction, and continuity. He was the bridge between generations and the bearer of identity and norms. Today, we are witnessing a historic shift. The father has not only lost centrality. He has lost shape. He has lost function. In many cases, he has also lost legitimacy. We no longer debate what kind of father is useful or desirable. The question is more radical: the father himself no longer seems necessary. Neither in raising children, nor in holding the family together, nor as a symbolic figure within the collective culture. The dominant narrative marginalizes him, mocks him, distrusts him. The father has become a semantic relic: invoked only as a risk, never as a resource. And so, as we demolish the father, nothing is built in his place. Fatherhood has not been reimagined. It has simply been deactivated—reduced to a biological function or to a monitored figure, subject to conditions, checks, authorizations. The result is a society that has dismantled the father in the name of progress, but in doing so has also emptied the family, continuity, and generational transmission. In this context, fatherhood is no longer seen as a value to be cultivated, but as a risk to be contained. 4. Beyond the Pain Industry: The Father as a Systemic Obstacle At first, I believed all of this could be explained by a concept as simple as it is unsettling: the pain industry. A system that profits from family breakdowns, that monetizes conflict, that feeds on suffering. A well-oiled machine in which every actor plays a part: courts, lawyers, police, psychologists, social workers, mediators. An apparatus that churns out documents, reports, consultations, evaluations, invoices—in a never-ending cycle. And yet, over time, this explanation began to feel insufficient. Because I noticed something more disturbing than bureaucratic complicity: a uniform, compact, transversal silence. Governments and oppositions—divided on everything else—remain equally silent. The Church, once a staunch defender of family values, is absent. The media are uninterested. The cultural sphere, distracted. Intellectuals, mute. Civil society, numbed. And so I understood: this is not just about money or negligence. The marginalization of the father is not a side effect. It is a symptom of a structural transformation. In a society that worships precariousness, short-term bonds, and reversibility, the father is a problem—because he embodies the idea of continuity, of responsibility, of limits. The father is the obstacle. He is what does not yield to the logic of contracts, procedures, and technical frameworks. He is what resists the atomization of the individual. And so, it’s not enough to neutralize him: he must be symbolically delegitimized. It is in this context that the word “shared parenting” reveals its true nature: a hypocritical slogan, repeated in every court document, while in reality the opposite is practiced—the father turned into a conditional, supervised, expendable figure. A halved parent. A suspect citizen. A man stripped of function and denied the most natural of rights: to be a father without needing permission. 5. Protection as a Weapon: The Father Turned into a Threat We don’t need to imagine a dystopia to understand what is happening. We just have to closely observe today’s legal and social norms. A normality in which every form of stable bond is gradually being questioned: homeland, community, religion, gender, family… And among them all, the most fragile and symbolically charged: the figure of the father. But what is even more disturbing is the language used to justify this disintegration. We no longer speak of “exclusion” or “removal.” We speak of safeguarding. Of prevention. Of child protection. As if the very presence of the father were a latent risk. As if the emotional bond between father and child had to be tested, filtered, authorized. As if paternal closeness were a threat to the child’s well-being. It is the perfect perversion of language. Protection is turned into preventive separation. Love becomes an object of suspicion. Emotional continuity becomes a negotiable scenario. And so, while proclaiming the importance of “shared parenting” and “the best interest of the child,” a silent and widespread practice takes hold—one that normalizes the absence of the father, that turns him into an optional presence, granted only under ideal, monitored, sanitized conditions. But a father placed under scrutiny is no longer a father. He becomes a temporary emotional officer, an asylum seeker in the lives of his own children. And this is no accident. It is the coherent result of a broader design: the atomization of the individual as a strategy of social governance, and the transformation of the child into an asset to be managed, not a subject to be raised within strong, real, imperfect relationships. 6. The Father Before the Law: From Subject to Legal Suspect The symbolic erasure of the father finds its most brutal expression in the courts. Not in extreme cases, but in the normalized, silent routines of everyday practice. More and more often, a father’s right to parenthood is made conditional on proof. It is no longer enough to be a father. One must prove it, justify it, argue it. In countless rulings—including my own—the same disturbing formula appears: “The father's interest in maintaining a relationship with the children was neither asserted nor demonstrated.” As if paternal love were a procedural claim. As if the desire to be present had to be filed, recorded, documented. As if fatherhood were no longer a relational fact, but a conditional concession. No one would ask a mother to explain her affection in writing. No mother is asked to prove the legitimacy of her love. But today, the father is forced to become his own lawyer, to defend what used to be enough simply to be. The legal system, which should ensure fairness and protection, has thus become an apparatus that legitimizes exclusion. A mechanism that does not correct biases—it institutionalizes them. And at the root of all this, there is not just a technical distortion or bureaucratic drift. There is an ideological prejudice. Deep-seated. Systemic. Blaming. The unspoken yet omnipresent belief that the father is: potentially harmful, emotionally secondary, symbolically obsolete. An idea that permeates evaluations, opinions, expert reports, court decisions. An idea that turns the man into a conditional parent, and the father into a suspicious figure to be monitored. And so, in the homeland of law, being a father is no longer a right. It is a test to pass. A privilege to negotiate. A role that can be revoked, reduced, dissected. 7. No Way Out of the Pot? A Call Before It’s Too Late I don’t know how to stop this downward spiral. I admit it with clarity, without shame. Even the most educated, sensitive, and aware minds seem unable to grasp the gravity of what is happening. Or worse—they do grasp it, and choose to look away. No one truly feels like a father until he is no longer allowed to be one. No one perceives the danger until it’s already too late. In the meantime, in the name of protection, relationships are erased, rights are sacrificed, and age-old principles of justice are suspended. Protection that excludes is not protection. It is control. It is domination. It is annihilation. And so, from this place of imposed marginality, from this silence that has been stitched onto me, I want to speak to those who still have the power to interrupt this destructive process. To politics—if there is still a kind of politics capable of listening to what is uncomfortable, one that doesn’t merely manage the present but seeks to transform it. To the Church—which for centuries spoke of the father, of fatherhood, of children—and which today remains too often silent precisely where its voice is most needed. To civil society, to those who work in services, in courts, in schools—those who know exactly what is happening, but who may have stopped being outraged. To intellectuals, journalists, jurists—to all those who wield words and ideas, and who have the duty to call out hypocrisy when they see it. To fathers, to men, to friends—who still believe that love, when it is real, should not need justification, only recognition. Stop. Let us stop. There is no more time. Because the frog is already in the hot water. And the next generation may grow up without ever knowing what a father truly was.