Outside of the law codes, and in modern scholarship, it is the role of the disciplinarian and educator that is the most dominant in depictions and discourses regarding fathers, and it appears that the responsibility for guiding and controlling a child's behaviour was the most significant practical change to a man's life once he becomes a father. There are many passionate exhortations for men to be examples of perfect Christian behaviour to their children, notably by Caesarius of Arles. There was also the strong expectation that fathers would become role models for their children, particularly their sons, with their lives becoming an example for their children to follow. Fatherhood was thus presented as a great responsibility, bringing stability to a young man's life. For example, Sidonius Apollinaris notes with relief that a formally wild acquaintance of his had finally married a noble woman because the arrival of children would ensure that he remains on a virtuous path in life.

One theme which runs through the literary texts is the encouragement of physical punishment of children. This motif is one which is very powerful in the post-Imperial West, being a facet of almost every discussion of fatherhood and what being a father entails in a Christian setting and it is related closely to the parallel Christian motif of kindly, loving physical punishment of children. This framed paternal punishment and discipline as an expression of Christian paternal love on a par with the giving of patrimony, but without the worldly connotations. It was also an area that was clearly posited as being exclusively within the remit of a father, with mothers never being depicted as disciplinarians or meting out punishments for misbehaviour. Theodore de Bruyn traced this concept through Late Antiquity and notes that it arose from the biblical quote: ‘Whom the Lord loves, he rebukes and he scourges every son he receives’ repeated at Hebrews 12:16 and Proverbs 3:12, and popularised in Late Antiquity by Augustine. This image of father as loving disciplinarian is theological, as is shown by Salvian's usage of the image to explain why God had allowed the Romans to be defeated by the barbarians, but was also related often to daily life.