Categories
culture

Fatherhood vs Manhood

Manhood Ideals
Photo by Jim Larrison

When Bryce and JP reviewed Bryce’s list of “what makes a man a man” I found myself thinking that Bryce’s list felt narrow in that it seemed to focus on fatherhood as if a man isn’t a man unless he is a father. My gut reaction was that a man can be a man (even a good man) without ever being a father or even wishing to be a father. The difference between my thinking and Bryce’s was made clear when my list was discussed on the podcast and they noted that Bryce took the view of defining what separated a man from a woman while I took the view of defining what separated a man from a boy. Let’s explore the difference between manhood and fatherhood and how I feel about Bryce’s focus on fatherhood in defining manhood.

Categories
culture

Rediscovering the Forgotten Parent

Photo by Phil Scoville

A recent article on the impact that fathers have on a child’s development brought this topic to mind. The article cited studies out of Oxfordcorrelating infant/father interactions and behavioral issues of young children. Better interactions between a father and a 3 month old correlated with fewer behavioral issues at a year and beyond. This is hardly a unique finding but it was a good reminder of this critical aspect of building strong families.

When we acknowledge how important good fathering is to building strong families the statistics about the absence of fathers is all the more alarming. Of course this is not a problem exclusive to fathers but the statistics on absentee and ineffective fathers is indicative of the overall weakness of the family in our present society.

Categories
life thoughts

Fathers on Father’s Day

Over the years in my life there have been a number of men who have served as examples of fatherhood for me – unfortunately despite whatever desires I have had my own father has never been among those men within the range of my memory. As Father’s Day approached this year I thought about how disappointing that was for me to realize that Father’s Day is a completely lopsided holiday for me – it is an excuse for my wife and kids to tell me I’m great (or not – young kids aren’t always reliable about acting as the label on the calendar might indicate) but I have no inclination to try digging out my Dad’s phone number to call him up and say “Thanks for . . . something; I just can’t think what exactly it was.”

Today started out bittersweet. Bitter for the reasons cited above, and sweet to hear my kids in the other room as I woke up singing Happy Birthday to their sister who has her birthday today as well. That indicated to me that we’re doing pretty good as a family. As I think on that and the fact that all my brothers seem to be doing pretty good as fathers in their own families I have hope for the future that my grandchildren and their generation of cousins etc. might be unaware that the chain of honorable fatherhood was ever broken in their ancestry.