Fathers
01/06/13 06:05
The fawn that was born in our yard a couple of days ago is still very tiny. You only notice it when it is standing up. When it lies down, you can be looking straight at it and not see it. Nature has done a good job with camouflage on that one. Most years we have one or two fawns that hang around our house. The combination of the tender green grass in your yard, where we mow and the protective taller grass in the neighbor’s place that isn’t mowed makes for a good place for urban deer to gather. We like the deer and enjoy watching them year round but the end of May and the beginning of June, when the fawns are so tiny, is a special time for deer watching from our house.
We don’t see much of the bucks except in the fall when the rut gets going strong. This time of year, they tend toward other parts of the country. Their skills aren’t needed for the care and feeding of the young ones.
That observation makes me glad to be a human. I can’t imagine not being around for the joys of caring for babies. In my role as a father and later as a grandfather, I have been up for as much time with children as possible. It is one of the deepest and most meaningful joys of being alive.
Sadly there are more than a few human fathers who are like the deer – they are absent during the infancy and childhood of their own children. Sometimes this is by necessity. Soldiers go to war, financial realities sometimes require extended travel away from family in order to provide the financial security required to raise children. Not everyone has the luxury of the job flexibility of a minister. When our children were very little, I had the increased flexibility of job sharing with my wife so that I was even more able to take time to be with our children.
The Pew Research Center recently found that four in 10 American households with children under the age of 18 include a mother who is either the primary breadwinner or the sole earner. That is about four times the number in 1966. It would be nice to think that this statistic is caused by pay equality and more mothers being able to out earn their husbands, but sadly this is not the case. The primary reason for the statistics is the surge in single-mother households.
Families in a state of rapid transition in our country and around the world. There are so many different sizes and configurations of family that it no longer makes any sense to say that one particular configuration is dominant. So-called “traditional” families with two parents and children are not infrequently reconfigured during the growing-up years of the children. Our church school is a very small sample, but we have children who come from all kinds of families. To teach that one type of family is somehow superior to another would be to unnecessarily and negatively label the children in the program. Children do not have control over the relationships of their parents. They are not the decision-makers in family configuration. They gain nothing from labels attached to them by those who are judgmental of their parents’ decisions.
Back in 2005, Maureen Dowd published a book entitled, “Are Men Necessary?” The book is a collection of anecdotes and opinions presented sometimes tongue-in-cheek and sometimes in a deeply sarcastic manner. She didn’t win any male fans with the publication of the book. On the other hand, she probably doesn’t care. In the midst of her ruminations about relationships between men and women, however, is the serious question about why men too often fail to be responsible to the most basic tasks of living in family.
Where she misses the boat, however, is by placing all men in the same boat, if you know what she means. There are plenty of us who are quite different than what she describes in her book.
A few years later, in a kind of dueling columnists, Kathleen Parker published “Save the Males,” her attempt at a humorous response to Dowd’s book. Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post, while Dowd’s pieces are most commonly found in the New York Times. Parker makes a good point in her simple observation: “Children need a father. That not all get a good one is no argument against what is true and irrevocable and everlasting.”
To her argument, I would add another observation: Fathers need children. Men who abandon their families, whether willingly or unwillingly, miss out on one of the most important joys and privileges of being male. It isn’t just acted out in the fun moments of vacations and camping trips and visits to Disneyland. Being a father is discovered in everyday chores of picking up toys, changing diapers and washing loads and loads of laundry. It is found in tending scrapes and bruises and reading stories and cooking meals. It is discovered in the midst of the weary tiredness that comes from being awakened in the midst of sleep night after night.
When I visit with couples who are expecting their first child, I will sometimes say to them, “Everyone will tell you that you can’t imagine how having a child will change your life. They are right. Your life is changed forever. I can’t tell you how – you have to learn that on your own.” But then I usually add that it is one of the best things that can possibly happen to a person. Nothing in my life is more wonderful than the privilege and joy of being a father.
And, in the way of the world, patient fathers are frequently rewarded with a new chapter that is as deep and rich and meaningful: becoming a grandfather.
The pundits are getting a lot of mileage out of the latest statistics from Pew Research. They are all drawing their own conclusions. Some are sure that it is evidence that our society is crumbling. Others read hope in the fact that women are able to earn more than previous generations. The study itself doesn’t have an opinion. It merely reports what has been observed. The world is changing.
In the midst of this changing world, fatherhood is still a vocation worth pursuing with a passion.
We don’t see much of the bucks except in the fall when the rut gets going strong. This time of year, they tend toward other parts of the country. Their skills aren’t needed for the care and feeding of the young ones.
Sadly there are more than a few human fathers who are like the deer – they are absent during the infancy and childhood of their own children. Sometimes this is by necessity. Soldiers go to war, financial realities sometimes require extended travel away from family in order to provide the financial security required to raise children. Not everyone has the luxury of the job flexibility of a minister. When our children were very little, I had the increased flexibility of job sharing with my wife so that I was even more able to take time to be with our children.
The Pew Research Center recently found that four in 10 American households with children under the age of 18 include a mother who is either the primary breadwinner or the sole earner. That is about four times the number in 1966. It would be nice to think that this statistic is caused by pay equality and more mothers being able to out earn their husbands, but sadly this is not the case. The primary reason for the statistics is the surge in single-mother households.
Families in a state of rapid transition in our country and around the world. There are so many different sizes and configurations of family that it no longer makes any sense to say that one particular configuration is dominant. So-called “traditional” families with two parents and children are not infrequently reconfigured during the growing-up years of the children. Our church school is a very small sample, but we have children who come from all kinds of families. To teach that one type of family is somehow superior to another would be to unnecessarily and negatively label the children in the program. Children do not have control over the relationships of their parents. They are not the decision-makers in family configuration. They gain nothing from labels attached to them by those who are judgmental of their parents’ decisions.
Back in 2005, Maureen Dowd published a book entitled, “Are Men Necessary?” The book is a collection of anecdotes and opinions presented sometimes tongue-in-cheek and sometimes in a deeply sarcastic manner. She didn’t win any male fans with the publication of the book. On the other hand, she probably doesn’t care. In the midst of her ruminations about relationships between men and women, however, is the serious question about why men too often fail to be responsible to the most basic tasks of living in family.
Where she misses the boat, however, is by placing all men in the same boat, if you know what she means. There are plenty of us who are quite different than what she describes in her book.
A few years later, in a kind of dueling columnists, Kathleen Parker published “Save the Males,” her attempt at a humorous response to Dowd’s book. Parker is a columnist for the Washington Post, while Dowd’s pieces are most commonly found in the New York Times. Parker makes a good point in her simple observation: “Children need a father. That not all get a good one is no argument against what is true and irrevocable and everlasting.”
When I visit with couples who are expecting their first child, I will sometimes say to them, “Everyone will tell you that you can’t imagine how having a child will change your life. They are right. Your life is changed forever. I can’t tell you how – you have to learn that on your own.” But then I usually add that it is one of the best things that can possibly happen to a person. Nothing in my life is more wonderful than the privilege and joy of being a father.
The pundits are getting a lot of mileage out of the latest statistics from Pew Research. They are all drawing their own conclusions. Some are sure that it is evidence that our society is crumbling. Others read hope in the fact that women are able to earn more than previous generations. The study itself doesn’t have an opinion. It merely reports what has been observed. The world is changing.
In the midst of this changing world, fatherhood is still a vocation worth pursuing with a passion.