The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf. — Marshall McLuhan

The place of the father in the modern suburban family is a very small one, particularly if he plays golf.

Author: Marshall McLuhan

Insight: There's something quietly devastating about McLuhan's observation—and it's not really about golf. It's about how we disappear into our hobbies and call it living. A father can be physically present at home, show up for dinner, attend the school play, and still be fundamentally absent. The golf game becomes the symbol of that absence, but it could just as easily be work emails, the garage project, or the endless scroll through a phone. What makes this cut deeper today is that we've somehow convinced ourselves this is fine. Modern parenting advice tells us dads don't need to be everything—which is true—but then we use that permission slip to opt out entirely. The suburban setup actually enables this. Everyone's cordoned off in their own space: kids in their rooms, mom managing the household, dad on the links or lost in some other escape. Physical proximity and emotional distance live in the same house. The twist is that this isn't really a complaint about fathers specifically. It's about how modern life makes it easy to share a roof with people and share almost nothing else. We've become brilliant at being alone together, and that's the real problem McLuhan was naming.