Arnold Schwarzenegger recently gave an interesting interview to the Times of London. It was less about promoting his Netflix show and more about promoting his environmental work, but he spoke about a variety of topics, including his pride in his son Patrick, the collapse of his marriage to Maria Shriver, how he’s living his American dream, and the so-called “crisis in masculinity.” I found his comments about masculinity the most notable – Arnold has always been pure machismo, profiting from the performance of his masculinity for decades. In his view, the crisis in masculinity is simple: every kid needs a father or father figure. Some highlights from the Times:
He’s totally fine when people interrupt his day to talk to him: “What people miss the most is to get attention. That someone knows them, is aware of them, that they’re somebody. And so they go to a shrink. They lie on the couch and someone is listening to them. But I go out anywhere to a crowd and they all listen. And they love to listen to my sh-t, right? I’m having fifty thousand shrinks sitting out there, and I don’t pay a f***ing penny. I get paid! So how can I complain about that?… OK, yes, there are times when you go to a restaurant and someone comes up and says, can I take a picture of you? But I can walk into this restaurant at any time, I can sit at any table I want, I make no reservation. For that I take a picture with someone. It takes three minutes. So why would I complain?”
On the second Trump era: “This country’s going through a difficult moment but it’s not the end of the world.”
Whether he thinks masculinity is in crisis: He claims to have never even heard of Andrew Tate, but reflects, “The majority of people have a problem. They feel down, depressed, not in a good mood. People come up to me in the gym and ask, ‘How can I get up in the morning and feel good?’ Well, I’m not an expert in psychology and all this stuff. But I tell them, what works for me is not to think. So therefore, don’t think. Just work out and struggle and fight. This will make you feel good mentally.”
What do young men need? “I don’t know if I have the solution or not. But when I think about my kids, none of them have that problem. And the reason is because there was a strong father there. I gave them discipline and didn’t let them get away with anything. And they were taught how to make their beds, they were taught how to wash their clothes. Because it’s like the way I grew up.” Then he gets out his iPad to show me videos of him painting Mother’s Day cards with his two young granddaughters and his expression melts as he points out their rapt gaze. “So I think that kids need a father and a mother. It’s always the key. And if they don’t have a father, some other male has to come in.”
He believes most young men lack father figures: Arnold’s only brother died in a car crash in Austria at the age of 24, leaving a three-year-old son, Patrick. Schwarzenegger brought his nephew to the US at 19, put him through college, got him a job at Gold’s Gym and he is now a successful entertainment lawyer in LA. “Of course he missed his father but that we couldn’t do anything about. He was dead. So now it was just surrounding him with the support and with male reinforcement, to say this is what you should do. The male dominance, that’s what they idolise.”
His son Patrick, who was just on The White Lotus: “Patrick never asked me a question about acting. But he came many times to me and said, ‘I just did an interview with this magazine and two thirds of the questions were about you.’ But I was just in New York and a journalist comes up and says, ‘What’s it like being the father of Patrick Schwarzenegger?’ All of a sudden, everything has changed around. I walk into the gym now and it used to be the girls would come up and give me their contact. And then after White Lotus comes out, the girl comes up and says, ‘Here’s my contact, give it to Patrick.’ So it’s wonderful. If I go to my grave and know that my son has outdone me, I’m in heaven.”
Yeah, he’s speaking from his own experience, it’s not like he’s claiming to be an expert on families. I’m not surprised that Arnold has retro, if not completely regressive, views on parenting, families and father figures. It is strange though, because… Arnold had a sh-tty father who was an abusive alcoholic Nazi, and Arnold turned into a much better man IN SPITE of his father. Arnold also denied fathering his son Joseph for years, although Arnold is a father to Joseph now and they’re in each other’s lives. There are plenty of toxic jackholes who had great fathers, and there are plenty of amazing people who grew up without strong, loving fathers or father figures. Arnold does edge up on one of my theories about the alleged “crisis of masculinity” though – the lack of quality role models for boys and young men, and in that vacuum, pieces of sh-t like Andrew Tate and Joe Rogan are celebrated.
Photos courtesy of Avalon Red.
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 10: (L-R) Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick Schwarzenegger attend the Los Angeles Premiere of HBO Original Series “The White Lotus” Season 3 at Paramount Theatre on February 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 962777528, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 10: (L-R) Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick Schwarzenegger attend the Los Angeles Premiere of HBO Original Series “The White Lotus” Season 3 at Paramount Theatre on February 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 962777560, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon
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- LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA – FEBRUARY 10: (L-R) Arnold Schwarzenegger and Patrick Schwarzenegger attend the Los Angeles Premiere of HBO Original Series “The White Lotus” Season 3 at Paramount Theatre on February 10, 2025 in Los Angeles, California.,Image: 962777574, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Patrick Schwarzenegger, Credit line: Jeffrey Mayer/Avalon
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – JUNE 11: Austrian and American actor, former Governor of California, businessman, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix’s ‘FUBAR’ Season 2 held at the Netflix Tudum Theater on June 11, 2025 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1010028350, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
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- HOLLYWOOD, LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, USA – JUNE 11: Austrian and American actor, former Governor of California, businessman, former politician, and former professional bodybuilder Arnold Schwarzenegger arrives at the Los Angeles Premiere Of Netflix’s ‘FUBAR’ Season 2 held at the Netflix Tudum Theater on June 11, 2025 in Hollywood, Los Angeles, California, United States.,Image: 1010028630, License: Rights-managed, Restrictions: , Model Release: no, Pictured: Arnold Schwarzenegger, Credit line: Xavier Collin/Image Press Agency/Avalon
What a hypocrite. Good dads don’t also screw the housekeeper and avoid parenting the affair child.
You were supposed to ignore that part.
Typical for conservative men: lots of rules and shaming of women.
No rules and excuses for them
Those were my first thoughts
“What a hypocrite. Good dads don’t also screw the housekeeper and avoid parenting the affair child.”
Absolutely bang on! Lousy role model for a father :(((
Good men don’t sexually assault women on movie sets.
He loves so much the idea of the family that he must have 2…like many conservatives.
BTW this is insulting: there are a lot of children who grew up and grow up without a father or a mother for different reasons, and they are well adjusted nice persons. It’s important to be loved and accepted. End of it.
Exactly. Good fathers don’t f*ck the maid. What a freaking hypocrite.
Came here to say exactly that. Where’s the dad in that situation? Peak hypocracy.
Every kid needs a great grown-up or grown-ups to nurture and care for them.
Exactly this. Kids need to be loved and encouraged and in relationship with adults who guide and protect them – a variety of healthy, wise, safe adults to help them learn about and navigate the world.
And yet, isn’t it interesting that the two most decent US presidents in recent times were brought up by single mothers? Barack Obama & Bill Clinton?
yes exactly. Every kid needs a loving adult or adults in their live to help care for them, raise them and love them. That can take many forms – single parent, grandparents, same sex parents, etc.
Good point
Even if said Dads are shtupping the maid and cheating on the Moms?? Sure, Arnie. Sure.
He taught the kids to make their own bed so the maid can get busy elsewhere.
LOL
Exactly what I came to say. Children need loving adults who make them feel safe and valued. But the “mother and father” narrative is hurtful to every child who doesn’t grow up in that dynamic. Or Who does have that dynamic in an abusive form. Let’s life up all loving, functional family structures.
Yes, I know far too many people who grew up with violent, authoritarian abusers as dads. Some of them committed suicide, some are in life long therapy, some are just disconnected. None idolised male ‘dominance’. Being dominated isn’t a recipe for a healthy adult. He wouldn’t know because I bet Maria did the actual parenting.
Yeah I completely agree. I also think that it’s an individualistic thing–like, not every child requires the same thing.
But generally-speaking, I do think men need to step up more in terms of being emotionally present and engaged with their kids. Throwing a football around is nice but young men need to be shown a version of masculinity that isn’t all about playing sports and being strong. I think we’d be a healthier society if men felt like they were allowed to be vulnerable, to share their feelings etc.
100% to men stepping up and being fathers or role models . . . I just always tread cautiously around this topic because historically it’s the women and children that get blamed for men’s lapses, and we’re in a regressive era.
BTW, @Kiki – My original post was meant to be a response to you.
So true. And single moms have so much pressure on them in terms of fulfilling every role that an absentee father leaves open: provider, caretaker, nurturer, teacher and on and on. It feels yucky–like we’re undermining or invalidating what an accomplishment it is to take on all that physical and emotional labor–by saying a father is required.
My husband was raised mostly by a single mom (she remarried when he was a preteen) and he’s the kindest, most empathetic man I’ve ever met. Just to say that having a present father is not the singular determining factor in young men becoming emotionally healthy adults.
Thank you for sharing , Kitten! Likewise, My husband and I were both the children of divorce, but geographically my father was around more than my husband’s was. But my husband had positive relationships with women, mother, sister, high school girlfriend. In short, he never blamed women for his father issues.
Yeah his youth would have been less stressful/more economically secure in a two parent family and he’d probably have fewer abandonment issues. Fathers/father figures matter. But so do healthy relationships with women. It’s complicated but healthy relationships and positive role models are what matter.
I think what Kaiser said about this arising from his own lived experience is true. His own father was so abusive that he wasn’t a “father” in any sense of the word. I had to write about Arnold’s life for a project and the stories from back in his childhood are brutal.
While the wording is unfortunate, what I think Arnold is conveying is that he’s proud of his own journey, despite its bumps, and his own realization that he really needed to step up to be a true father. He didn’t want to leave everything to his children’s mothers.
“he really needed to step up to be a true father. ” Did he though???!!! Carrying on with the help is NOT what I call good parenting! Grrr..
I have no problem with this.
Coming from a British-Nigerian background, I hear this a lot.
I don’t agree that every household needs a father and a mother–same-sex couples can be wonderful parents–but he’s not wrong about the importance of having a male figure or mentor that models positive male behavior.
Musk, Trump, Vance–America is suffering the consequences of their deep-seated Daddy Issues.
Overall, our society places far too much focus on women being perfect mothers while the lowest possible expectations are applied to men being good fathers. Men are supposed to be financial providers but not emotional providers. IMO we’d have a helluva lot fewer school shooters if fathers were more empathetically engaged with their children.
SNORT! That really is a trifecta of daddy issues.
I know Arnold is problematic insofar as his own family situation is one that he sabotaged (having a fling with the help is the acme of bad judgement, don’t sh*t where you eat, people with domestic staff recognise this is as basic a boundary as incest, it’s an order of magnitude beyond a work affair cause it involves your family and their privacy) …and yet. And yet. I love Arnold, I love that he’s just like, no BS, get on with it, you’re lucky to be alive, stop feeling sorry for yourself, use some common sense and just stop moping. It could be worse. Is Trump awful? Yes. Is it the end of the world? No. He’s life affirming. He has bracing perspective. He keeps it real. And FWIW his son with the lady who worked for his family had a “father” who raised him, who was married to his mother, who may have even believed the boy to be his, so probably everyone involved just avoided the topic out of a blend of dread and decency. But he dealt with that, too. Not bad, for the son of an alcoholic ex-Nazi. I mean. Europe has lessons for us.
In fairness it’s very easy to say that when you’re rich and also married into a very wealthy, respected family. His marriage helped him endlessly. Many people can’t feed their family or keep the lights /heating on, or in the US afraid of being deported to another country. Where they’ll possibly or likely die.
🎯
Or the people USAID has been forced to abandon.
The world is going to end (or has ended) for the many people who did not or will not survive a Trump administration.
Schwarzenegger is just talking, as usual, out of his privileged ass.
He has a sleazy history of behavior toward women. Caused damage when he decide to play governor without having the brains or background for it. And was protesting against California’s redistricting backup plan even though we are in an existential crisis as a country. He can go sit somewhere.
Exactly. And remember he tried to take the power from unions.
“So I think that kids need a father and a mother. It’s always the key. And if they don’t have a father, some other male has to come in.”
I think, the rest of the sentence is the full context. A lot of single mothers talk about their son’s uncle, grandfather or some other male relative is given that role, so their child can see a male role model in their real life. When that is absent, these social media influencers unfortunately get the job and manipulate the kids from a young age.
Him talking about not thinking and just working out is really funny and very old school. It sounds like suppression, but when I felt really unmotivated, just silencing my mind and moving / doing what I needed to do really helped.
This. Context is important. My son was raised by a single mother (me) who surrounded him with positive male role models (my father, my brother, friends, cousins) who helped shape him into the man he is today.
My husband was raised by a bada** single mom, who left her abusive alcoholic husband, and raised him to be a CEO of a company today.
I was raised in a traditional mom and dad family, with a boatload of baggage and mental health issues.
Sorry Arnie, what kids need is a parent who won’t sleep with the housekeeper and then deny her baby paternity or support.
Exactly! And how much parenting did he do? He sounds emotionally quite disconnected, don’t feel! Just be happy! Maria did the emotional work in that family.
I’m paraphrasing here, but I distinctly remember a comment from Maria in the lead up to their wedding / during their courtship, Arnold told her not to depend on him for her happiness, that everyone was responsible for their own.
.
It would seem that emotional bootstrapping sort of failed him here — & burdened his famil(ies) w/ some emotional baggage. The 4 kids don’t seem to be accepting their half-brother.
Arnold speaks from what he believes regarding parenting. He’s not preaching about fidelity. Any adult that provides support and nurturing for a child is important. Boys definitely need more present male role models that offer emotional and intellectual encouragement. I’m not going to dismiss his pov just because he slept with the maid. Maria Shriver dealt with that issue promptly.
Noomi, I agree with you, Arnold is not preaching nor moralizing. Statistics show that a two parent family children are more successful on all levels than a one parent family.
What about the nanny?
What about a dad who boffs the babysitter?
You know what kids need from their fathers? Kids need their fathers not to boink their nannies behind their mother’s back, and then years later try to act like some sort of moral spokesperson for fatherhood.
This guy is not a good guy, folks.
He’s still a Republican, he was just wearing an anti-redistricting T shirt about efforts in CA, not TX. A rich white guy telling us “it’s not the end of the world” when the world does end for scores of people every day. Gah.
I know, that shocked and pissed me off too! There’s a big difference between what’s going on in Texas vs. California. Seems like he’s consciously swinging rightward.
The question is, why? Is he promoting something, or is he covering his ass from Orange?
He lost me when he said Trump’s America is “going through a difficult moment” but it’s not the end of the world. Sure feels like it. A moment is over quickly. This is the wholesale destruction of a once great nation. We may never recover.
The very rich will always minimize it, because it doesn’t affect them.
He does have a point. Children need a male mentor – someone to emulate a father figure in the child’s life. Just like boys need a male mentor to teach them about being a man, girls need a female one. We also need the opposite figures in our lives. There is a reason the most successful human pairing is that of a male and female parenting their young. That pairing has kept the human race alive and dominant. We need the education from both halves ideally.
It’s human instinct. We always look for the fathers and mothers missing in our lives. We look for these people in different ways – but we do look- often subconsciously. That’s human nature.
LOL, like he is any shining example of a father figure. My father died when I was 6 years old and my siblings and I were raised by my mother with the help of her family. We all turned out to be well-educated, hard-working, tax-paying, law abiding citizens. What children need is safety, security and love.
I hate when people use the two parent thing to blame atrocities on the children (and the usually single mother). In a documentary I’ve shown my classes, women whose partners have deserted them and skip out on paying any child support are often poor, despite working two or three jobs. Don’t blame women and children for crime. It stinks.
A colleague’s daughter was his waitress years ago in a NYC restaurant. She said he was short, unpleasant and cheap.
I remember seeing a display at the Hard Rock Cafe of his Terminator costume. My main impression was how short he must be. The internet says he’s 6’2 which I absolutely don’t believe. Other sites say he’s about 5’10 and even that seems taller than reality.
As an attorney who spent several years representing abused and neglected children in Brooklyn, NY, Arnold is full of shite.
What makes the biggest difference for children, boys AND girls, is to have ONE PROSOCIAL ADULT, whether a parent (of either gender), stepparent, Teacher, Coach, family friend, librarian… Anyone who has consistent time with the child.
And, yeah, narcissistic philandering sexual predators are not prosocial adults.
To the extent his kids turned out ok, it’s not due to his influence.
What a joke.
If you knew how utterly down and dirty he treated California nurses, and by extension sick people who need nurses, then you’d share my total distaste for this man.