Tim McGraw Credits His Wife And Daughters For Teaching Him 'How To Be A Man'

One of the most well-established tropes in country music is generational wisdom. A father hands life lessons down to his son and so on. Tim McGraw, arguably one of the most recognizable voices in the genre, claims his life inverted the formula: His education in manhood came not from his father, but his wife Faith Hill and their three daughters. "They have made me such a better man," he said of Hill and the girls in a 2021 interview with the now-inactive website Leo, per Today. "They made me see things in a different way. They taught me so much more about life, about how to be a man."

Tim McGraw and Faith Hill's marriage in 1996 set the whole thing in motion, and after decades, the influence he talks about couldn't be overstated. The man once claimed that it was his daughter who made him want to get in shape and stay healthy. Gracie, Maggie, and Audrey were born in 1997, 1998, and 2001, and in McGraw's telling, between the four of them they manage to keep him on his toes.  Even growing up, McGraw's household skewed female with his mother and two sisters, and what he says about Hill and his girls might have to do with the circumstances of that childhood.

Tim McGraw spent his Louisiana childhood as Tim Smith, carrying the surname of his stepfather, Horace Smith, and assuming that was the whole story. The truth emerged when he was 11 and poking around his mother's belongings. "I was digging through something and found my birth certificate," he recalled in a 2019 chat with Today. "It said, McGraw." His biological father turned out to be Tug McGraw, the relief pitcher known for his years with the New York Mets and Philadelphia Phillies.

They met within the year, but a proper relationship waited until McGraw was 18. Tug was 59 when brain cancer killed him in 2004.They got closer in the years preceding that and connected through their love for baseball. McGraw released one of his best-performing singles, "Live Like You Were Dying," a few months after his father's death. In 2015, he honored Tug by taking the mound for the first pitch before Game 4 of the World Series in a Mets jersey.

Growing up as a boy with no father figure definitely left its mark nevertheless. "I didn't really have a dad around much, and when I did have one around, they weren't the best role models," he told Leo. He's filled that gap with his family, and believes the women who share his home now understand this whole thing better than he does. "There's nothing like being surrounded by that," he said. "They can teach you how to be a man more than I can."