Homer Simpson, Ray Romano, Randy Marsh, and Hal Wilkerson—all idiots. Good natured, bumbling, and well-intentioned, but idiots nonetheless. The clear implication is that these media-created dads are buffoons at best, and detriments to their own families at worst. Considering Peter Griffin of Family Guy has a stated IQ of 70, these near-neanderthals are certainly unnecessary in family life—except as an easy punchline used to cue the laugh tracks. Of course, the aforementioned half-wits are offset in media portrayals, not with wholesome, discerning, and forthright fathers. Rather, they are counterbalanced with "toxic" characters like Reese Bobby, Royal Tenenbaum, and Lucious Lyon. As cultural commentators have pointed out, fathers are either "comically inept" or "cruelly dominant." Either way, paternalism is "reduced to extremes" and they are certainly not fit as husbands or fathers. They are all, in a word: useless.

For Terry Schilling—one of the speakers of NatalCon 25—these dumb-dad tropes are evidence that fathers and fatherhood are severely undervalued in our current culture. He reasons that if fatherhood is unattractive, then this prevailing attitude would naturally contribute to the ongoing decline in fertility rates. These caricatures and devaluing portrayals are, for Schilling, a clear message that men are neither needed or desired in domestic life.

One of the outcomes of this set of cultural mindsets is that men are demoralized into what he calls the "destruction-distraction industrial complex," characterizing it as a set of "predatory industries." He further explains that this nexus of addictive tech, free porn, online gambling, and gaming fixations couple with broader messaging on masculinity in the culture that combine to form a negative feedback loop. Men who engage in these self-destructive patterns are indeed less fit for marriage than those who don't. They become the very caricatures that the media portray them as, and they indeed are undesirable as family men. Unable to find a suitable spouse, they are further demoralized into this doom loop as a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy.