Late nineteenth‐century children were taught about their future roles through popular periodicals. Specifically, components of the manly domesticated father were highlighted: from the domestic goal of evangelical manliness, to the requirements of the ideal husband, the moral and pious centrality of the domesticated father, the rhetorical demonstration of fatherly failure and male weakness, and women’s duties in relation to domesticated manliness. The result is a clear expression of the significance of male domesticity in the era of supposed ‘flight’, and a call to historians to reconsider the importance usually ascribed to the moral influence of mothers at the expense of fathers.