It happens near the end of the book. Gisele Barreto Fetterman, the wife of Senator John Fetterman (D-Pa.), had just spent more than 200 pages making the case in Radical Tenderness: The Value of Vulnerability in an Often Unkind World that people need to cry, to express their needs, to open up, and show their soft spots in this cold and hard digital and political world. We also need to treat others with more love and tenderness. 

Then it happens. Fetterman recalls a scene involving their young son Karl when he was coming home from a sleepover.

Once, after Karl came home from a sleepover, he jumped in the car and shared that his friend’s parents were getting divorced. The friend was devastated, he said. “Would you and Dad ever get divorced?” he asked. John and I responded at the same time from the front seat. “No,” said John. “Maybe,” I responded. John was, understandably, surprised by my response. But I explained that, though I loved him and hoped we’d always be together, I wanted to be realistic and honest with the kids about all of life’s possibilities.

Wow. Gisele Fetterman after spending almost an entire book cheerleading for the “magic” of vulnerability and preaching the gospel “radical tenderness,” slams the reader with this vignette. Here she had the chance to practice the very things to which she devotes her book, and instead she bodied her husband—and from the top rope.

The future Senator Fetterman was “understandably surprised” by his wife’s response. He was probably also humiliated, embarrassed, mortified, hurt. Thomas Merton once made the observation that liberals are great at loving humanity but lousy at loving individual people. Even if she thinks a marriage might be in trouble, a decent wife and mother doesn’t just casually drop that information out of the blue in front of an innocent kid looking for some security. She certainly wouldn’t do that just to be theoretically “honest” about some remote possibility.

Gisele Fetterman’s cruel response to her son is unfortunate, because Radical Tenderness is a book that otherwise has a lot going for it. Fetterman thinks the world has gotten too brittle and angry and that allowing ourselves to be more vulnerable and experience tenderness with others would offer a remedy—a refreshing breeze of humanity.

The simple acceptance of tears can be a precursor to radically reimagining what it means to be respected, strong, and resilient,” Fetterman writes. “Softness also takes strength. It’s my mission—through exploring the role of tenderness in my own life and uplifting other examples of vulnerability in work, family, and life—to show that big feelings are nothing to be embarrassed about. That gentleness can be a superpower, not a liability. And that embracing our emotions and leaning into vulnerability is not a form of weakness, but rather a strength—one that is critical to social and cultural change. Doing so can transform the way we lead, treat one another, and prepare future generations to build a better, more empathetic world.

It’s difficult to argue against that message, even when the messenger is flawed. Nobody wants to suggest there would be something wrong with a kinder gentler world, but the problem with Radical Tenderness is that it doesn’t qualify its call for a new Fred Rogers ethos. (Mr. Rogers is, of course, a hero in Radical Tenderness).

“I am not suggesting that we all reduce ourselves to a puddle of tears and refuse to deal head on with life’s challenges,” Fetterman writes. “The opposite, really: I am suggesting we learn to sit with hard things, adapt when needed, and spread tenderness in a world that would have us remain hidden and disconnected. It takes openness and strength to feel the sometimes-difficult emotions that so many of us tamp down each and every day.”

Yet, in a way, Fetterman is suggesting we feel tenderness when it’s not appropriate. Just as crying can be healing and appropriate at the right time—happy tears at a wedding, or sad ones upon the death of a loved one—there are occasions when they are out of place. For example, former Speaker of the House John Boehner used to break down in public for a host of reasons unbecoming to his station. Yet Fetterman argues that:

all of us—especially boys—are reprimanded for or discouraged from crying. Parents justify this by saying they are preparing their kids for the world, but really we are teaching them an early lesson in self-silencing and establishing a toxic framework for approaching adulthood. It’s a lesson that reverberates throughout our lives. Let’s eliminate the phrase ‘fighting back.’

Actually, let’s not. Wisdom is realizing that sometimes an abundance of tenderness can be suicidal, such as when it’s crucial to show assertiveness rather than vulnerability. Fetterman spends the early chapters of Radical Tenderness describing how when she was a girl and her family emigrated to the United States from Brazil, there was constant fear of being deported. Fetterman doesn’t concede that the fear stemmed from the fact that they had broken the law to get into this country. Tenderness and vulnerability are much easier to feel if the person on the receiving end has acted with honor. This is why most Americans may feel sorry for children suffering from gender dysphoria, but that tenderness turns to anger when the same kid takes a spot on a girls’ sports team. Tenderness, empathy, and honor are all intertwined. Fetterman is calling for a gentler world, but it is a world without limits and honor. What you get, then, is chaos.

There is also a larger, spiritual lesson about allowing ourselves to be vulnerable. In his recent book The Moral Life the priest James Keenan argues that vulnerability is crucial to Christian life.

For example, one of the reasons why we are never meant to fully recover from grief, Keenan writes, is because grief is a sign of deep and abiding love. Grief keeps alive our love for the person we have lost: “Entrance into grief is not solely an encounter with absence but with presence as well.” More importantly, grief makes us vulnerable, which is the beginning of the opening up to Christ. 

When Mark and the disciples were grieving in the Upper Room over the death of Jesus, it was in that moment of vulnerability our Lord chose to return to them. Jesus came to them when they were at their most defenseless and open to receiving Him and all His gifts. Grief, Fr. Keenan observes, also “opens the door” for us to minister to others and share the love of Jesus with them. When the disciples went to the Upper Room to mourn Jesus, their tears and stories and pain were not a hindrance to their connection to God, but a vital doorway through which Jesus could enter. Keenan puts it this way: “Their grief was not an obstacle to their capacity to see Jesus but rather the passageway itself.” 

Keenan argues that there are three steps to a Christian moral life: grief, vulnerability, and recognition. When we grieve, we are vulnerable. Jesus then enters our lives, and we can recognize the suffering of others.

“People have been telling me to fight back for my whole life,” Fetterman observes in Radical Tenderness. “But I don’t need to fight. I don’t need to be right. I have found a different approach, one that is authentic to me and that often leads to remarkable results. I show my feelings. I express my vulnerabilities. I’m not afraid.” 

If only she recognized that same vulnerability in her husband and child.