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Notes -
What Musk is doing is actually quite "traditional". Historically, powerful men didn't invest much time in raising their children, particularly young ones.
Traditionally powerful men cared about the raising of their legitimate(which these are, because they’re acknowledged) sons even if they didn’t do it personally. Musk doesn’t seem to care much about eg the schools they go to.
What's the evidence for that?
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Yes, I think you can plausibly argue that wealthy and powerful men fathering many children on a range of mistresses, and then minimally investing in them while also planning to select the most (genetically?) capable of them to pass the family name on to has been common throughout history.
The traditional/conservative/Catholic/Christian line that I imagine First Things would take would be that they are quite aware that their position has not been the norm, because virtue is hard and requires discipline and effort to achieve. The idea would be that traditionalism is a set of norms intended to tame barbarism, as it were, and that what we now see from the right, especially the tech right, is a moral backsliding. They're barbarians; they are the resurgence of a wretched old thing, rather than bold innovators, as they would presumably prefer to see themselves.
The goal is to raise the next generation of adults. Ideally, so that they are happy, capable, virtuous and have the fundamentals for success in their lives. Typically the role of the father in all this is material support and some kind of practical and moral guidance. The traditional nuclear family works well in that regard for most normal men. That said, I don't see an issue with providing those things in another way if one has the resources to do so. Materially speaking, Musk's children are provided for. And he could easily hire highly moral, capable and intelligent people to give them personal guidance, or arrange for them to spend time with such people. That's also a "traditional" solution. I think with some care, he could easily give them a life at least 95% of Americans would envy. If he manages that, it would be hard to condemn him as irresponsible.
Fatherhood is not fungible.
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