It is easy to become a father. It is difficult to become and stay a good father.
My wife is a wonderful mother, grandmother, and great-grandmother. She has been the “master sculptor,” holding, caressing, and loving our children into who they are today.
Since our marriage more than seven decades ago, I have too often been, as one of our sons astutely observed, “Just another mouth to feed.” I tried to make it home for supper.
During the first 17 years of our marriage, we had four children. I was seldom home. Somehow, I deceived myself into thinking work and education was for my family. I was closer to my banker whose loans made it possible to earn three graduate degrees. Usually, I had one full-time job and a part-time evening job.
I was forty when I opened my office as a physician. It was a noteworthy event because my mother, a “prayer warrior,” died the same day she received the announcement of my practice opening. She knew her prayers for me and my family had been answered.
On Martin Luther King, Jr.’s birthday, January 15, 1991, I left my medical practice and volunteered to serve my country in the first Desert Storm War. Thank God, the war was brief, but I enjoyed Army medical practice and remained on active duty for nearly a year.
If there is a list of traits describing the importance of fathers, AVAILABILITY would be at the top of the list. Looking back, I regret that I failed miserably to be available to my family.
Also high on the list of the importance of fathers is CONSISTENCY. We learn from Object Relations Theory that the stages of the development of the sense of self are crucial and sequential from normal autism, and normal symbiosis, to separation, and individuation.
To become a secure individual, object constancy is essential. In other words, for an infant to develop normally, he or she needs to learn that what is expected is, in fact, observed. This can happen only when parental consistency exists. The need for consistency, principally the mother’s responsibility for infancy, is, nonetheless, a lifelong need that both mother and father must ensure.
I am worried that mothers today too often find it necessary to relinquish their mothering role to childcare providers. Mothers were needed to replace men at work during WWII. Now it is rare today to find a “stay-at-home” mother.
I grew up in a blue-collar family during the great depression, but my mother, or the mothers of my neighbors never worked outside the home. Of course, as Bob Dylan sings, The Times They Are A-Changin:
“Come mothers and fathers
Throughout the land
And don’t criticize
What you can’t understand
Your sons and your daughters
Are beyond your command
Your old road is rapidly agin’
Please get out of the new one
If you can’t lend your hand
For the times they are a-changin’”
“CARING” cannot be omitted from the list of the importance of fathers. American culture does not make it easy for men to express the strong, positive feelings they often experience. We find it awkward to show caring.
Mothers try to be helpful by saying, “Your father is a good provider.” It does not help. It cannot replace the unavailable dad. Bedside stories mean less. They lack the meaning and security that only a caring, warm body called “Daddy” can offer.
All the traits listed above of the importance of fathers can be summed up in LOVE. A loving dad is never indifferent, indulgent, abusive, neglectful, rageful, indecent, or disrespectful of his children.
I remember my toddler son’s tears and tight hugs as I left for work each morning. They were like jet fuel for a B-29 aircraft. They lingered in my mind all day. In a flash, I stood at the door as he left after a visit to his elderly parents. My tears internally splashed over my heart and soul.
The family is meant to be sacred. Originally, God created the family.
The Bible emphasizes the importance of family both physically and theologically. From the beginning, God blessed humanity to multiply and fill the earth. Genesis 1:28.
God’s plan for creation was for men and women to marry and have children. A man and a woman would form “one-flesh” union through marriage. With their children, they become a family, the essential building block of human society. Genesis 2:24.
Families are troubled. It is not new that families are in turmoil, but the causes today may differ from 8 or 9 decades ago. For example, as the youngest of 6 children, I witnessed problems as a quiet, observant child. I had 3 sisters and 6 brothers-in-law. Yes, each of my sisters was married twice. For the most part, owing to the strong influence of my mother, all the husbands and former husbands and their brides got along well with each other.
In the new age, also called postmodernism, logical reasoning is less common than the supremacy of “feelings.” “The day I first saw him,” she said without shame or guilt, “I fell in love with him.” The “him” in this case happened to be married, the father of three children, and many years senior to the “she.” What strikes me as new in this often repeated scenario is the open, undisguised selfishness of the common submission to guiltless disregard of those whose lives are forever damaged.
Each of us is given a 70-year warranty and a handbook for a joyful everlasting life, the Holy Bible. The “Good Book” as it is often called, says many things on the importance of fathers. A few are selected to remind us of God’s wisdom:
“Train up a child in the way he should go; even when he is old he will not depart from it.” Proverbs 22:6.
“And you fathers do not provoke your children to wrath, but bring them up in the training and admonition of the Lord.” Ephesians 6:4.
“As a father shows compassion to his children, so the Lord shows compassion to those who fear him.” Psalm 103:13.
“Fathers do not provoke your children, lest they become discouraged.” Colossians.” 3:21.
“My son do not despise the Lord’s discipline or be weary of his reproof, for the Lord reproves him whom he loves, as a father the son in whom he delights.” Proverbs 3:11-12.
“It is for discipline that you have to endure. God is treating you as sons. For what son is there whom his father does not discipline?” Hebrews 12:7.
“Listen to your father who gave you life, and do not despise your mother when she is old.” Proverbs 23:22.
“Above all, keep loving one another earnestly, since love covers a multitude of sins.” 1 Peter 4:8.
“Nevertheless let each one of you in particular so love his own wife as himself, and let the wife see that she respects her husband.” Ephesians 5:33.
Dear reader, no job, profession, or educational achievement is more fulfilling than the importance of being a good father and remaining an even better father each day of the gift of life you receive.
As Pope John II, later canonized as Saint John Paul II, said, “Each child is God’s irreplaceable gift.”
As the incredibly proud dad of four “irreplaceable gifts from God,” I acknowledge with sadness, that now that I know the actual importance of fathers, there are no replaceable childhoods.
Robert S. Brown, MD, PHD a retired Psychiatrist, Col (Ret) U.S. Army Medical Corps devoted the last decade of his career to treating soldiers at Fort Lee redeploying from combat. He was a Clinical Professor of Psychiatry and Professor of Education at UVA. His renowned Mental Health course taught the value of exercise for a sound mind.