Part 12 of 62.

In Texas, the standard custody order gives one parent about 20% of the year with their child — and that parent is the father about four times in five. A good dad, by default, becomes a weekend visitor.

One honest caveat: Texas also allows an expanded order with more time, and since 2021, when parents live within 50 miles of each other, that expanded schedule is presumed. Even then, the standard order is the floor the law starts from — and the parent who gets it is the father about four in five.

Sources: Texas Family Code §153.312 (Standard Possession Order) and §153.3171 (expanded order; 50-mile provision, effective 2021); U.S. Census Bureau, Custodial Parents and Their Child Support: 2022 (about 4 in 5 custodial parents are mothers).

Free when you subscribe: our guide to the conversations a boy needs — before he stops asking for them. Read more at letshearitfortheboys.org.

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Boys start out as open as anyone. Then, somewhere in the growing up, they learn to say “I’m fine” and mean the opposite — and the people who love them get shut out one “nothing” at a time.

This free guide is about reaching him before that door closes.

What’s inside:

• Ten conversations worth having with a boy in your life — each a real, concrete moment. When school makes him feel stupid. When his friends pull him toward trouble. When it gets really heavy.

• How boys actually take things in — the timing, the setting, and why side-by-side beats face-to-face.

• What to do when it doesn’t land — the four ways a boy deflects, and the move that meets each one.

• Every number in it is real, from a primary source, and honestly caveated. No neuromyths. No scare stats.

It’s for anyone who loves one — mother or father, grandparent, teacher, coach, mentor, friend.

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This is the start of a bigger series: 62 conversations about growing up male. The next one lands soon.

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Almost every teenage boy in America has an adult he can turn to.

Far fewer have a man. (RAND, 2025.)

I didn’t believe that gap the first time I saw it. So I found the source. It held.

That’s how this started.

I’m a father, not an expert

Not a researcher. Not an activist. A dad.

But once I’d seen that one, I started seeing the same shape everywhere — a boy with no man to turn to, and years later, a man with a full contact list and no one to call.

Quiet, documented gaps in how boys and men are doing. The kind that don’t trend and don’t get a ribbon.

So I started drawing them. Sixty-two conversations, one gap at a time.

What this is

On TikTok and Instagram, each one is a short illustrated conversation — a boy, or a young man, and one adult who shows up for him. It ends on a single verified number.

Here is the longer version: the whole statistic, where it comes from, what it actually measures and what it doesn’t, and the strongest argument against it.

The one rule

That last part runs everything:

• Named, primary sources only. No “studies show.”

• Contested or unsettled? I say so — on the page, not in a footnote.

• The best counterargument goes in front of you, so you never get half the picture.

• No outrage, no villains. This isn’t a complaint about anyone. It’s a case for someone.

Honest numbers move more people than loud ones. A true figure you can check outlasts an inflated one a critic can wave away.

So I’d rather hand you one that holds.

What to expect

New pieces when they’re ready. I’d rather be right than regular.

It’s free, and it stays free to read.

Subscribe and I’ll send you the first thing I made for this — 10 Conversations Every Dad Should Have With His Son.

If you’ve ever looked at a boy you love and thought someone should be keeping track —

that’s what this is.