KS&L 65 & 66: Fathers

Parenting has often been discussed. What is means to be a mom seems to be more universally understood than what it means to be a dad. There are far more “how to” books for mothering than for fathering, as if somehow, fathering was not quite as important.

Each of us has our own definition of what a father is, or is not supposed to be based on our own unique experience. In today’s world, intact families are the unusual anomaly, no longer the norm. My daughter once remarked that she was the only one among her friends with original parents in a healthy marriage.

Is this state of affairs of separated families a good or a bad thing? It isn’t good or bad, it just is how it is right now. Often, because it seems that karma is being speeded up, many things have to be resolved in this lifetime regarding relationships - at a much greater speed than in the past. What that means is that couples lead more complicated lives and it is often not as easy or as time affordable to work things out between couples - which means that there are more and more families without dads. Sometimes it seems that there is more karma being created on the negative side in divorces than can be resolved in one lifetime. It doesn’t have to be that way.

Some divorce situations are so filled with rage and anger that kids feel disloyal if they try to maintain their love for both parents. Some parents use their kids as pawns to punish their partners. No one ever wins this pissing contest: everyone just gets really stinky.

Perhaps the greatest loss to families is the concept of the involved dad, the dad who helps as an equal partner and respects the mom and remains in an active partnership with the mom, balanced discipline for the kids. Parents who support one another are often quite rare.

Many women who grow up without dads never really understand men and often take on their mother’s hatred of men, which then deprives the daughter of a loving relationship with a good husband. Many boys grow up with dads who hate and abuse women and the same situation is the result. These things work both ways.

We need dads. Moms always operate from a mom’s perspective. The reason we have two parents is the balance and wisdom a child receives from both a male and female perspective.

We need dads to be teachers to their kids, to be examples of what moral values stand for and for teaching that kindness backed with strength of character are the foundations for a successful life. We need dads who keep their word and are fair in all their dealings.

But the problem is that men and women who don’t have positive role models often have no idea how to be that kind of parent. They fumble and seldom ask for help. Often they say well, it was ok for me, why isn’t it ok for my child? Because it isn’t, that’s why. Because each of us has to do a better job of parenting than was done for us and if we had great parenting, build on that foundation.

Having identified that dads are important, and since there are so many single mom’s out there trying to fulfill both roles perhaps it is a good idea to identify what good dads bring to the family.

A really good dad is a teacher for all his children, offering them the benefit of his wisdom when it comes to people, politics, career guidance, sportsmanship, building things, tools, and life in general.

The dad who just sits in front of the TV and never spends time reading or holding his little kids misses out on an incredible opportunity to teach his children something. When you teach them, it means you are spending time with them. One of my sons noted that some of his happiest times were when he was in the garage working on something with his Dad - the give and take, the patience of learning how tools work. There were the times when they built gigantic Lego projects together and the guidance received at those times, enabled our son had to build Lego models on his on as a practice for following written directions.

Dads teach balance in a marriage: doing chores, washing dishes, sharing in the cleaning, yard work and errand running.
Dads teach consideration when shopping for birthdays, mother’s day and holidays for moms and siblings.
Dads teach politics when they discuss their jobs with their sons and daughters so that they can understand how the real world functions from a man’s perspective.

Children learn what marriage is like ONLY from watching their parents. Kids will do what their parents do unless they are very, very savvy and can differentiate from what was great about their parents and what required improvement.

Boys learn how to treat women with respect, from watching their dad interact with their mom. If the dad is kind and considerate, then sons learn this. Girls learn how women are to be treated from their dad’s attitude toward their mom. The abusive father creates abusive kids and abusive adults. The disrespectful father creates disrespectful kids. The physically and verbally violent dad creates horrific trauma for kids literally for generations to come.

It is always better to have a single mom family than have a violent family with an abusive dad. The kids never really forgive the mom for continuing to allow the abuse much less the dad for abusing all of them. Why didn’t she just leave him, they ask themselves for the rest of their lives, until they end up in the same type of marriage. It takes quite a bit of courage to leave that life.

So dads are incredibly valuable and families need dads for love and for balance. Families don’t need dads who are never there or who abuse.

Like everything else in human relationships, the father connection is very complicated and incredibly important. Let us hope that more men decide to be really great dads because they are incredibly important in everyone’s life.

So, on Father’s Day, let us honor all those dads who do represent the best of fathering and let us say a prayer for all those dads who do not in the hopes that some day, they may come to understand the tremendous importance of the father’s role in a child’s life.