But I propose that much of what makes fathering so difficult is that fathers are men. That's not the whole of the theory. That's the reality, the ground on which the theory is built. From the beginning, it has been required of men that they be strong. Man is a Viking.
Man stands like the king of creatures in the veldt, unmoved by whatever threatens.
I believe it to be one of the most frightening poems in the English language. That's only half the poem. Those are only half of the requirements for manliness. Kipling's man was the idealized Victorian model. He was epitomized by the British Officer, ramrod straight on his white horse, buttoned up to his beard in a wool uniform in the middle of the desert prepared to show those ragged beggars screaming before him how an Englishman dies.