On fathers:
The role of fathers continues to evolve
The first Father’s Day was
observed in Spokane, Washington on June 19, 1910. Since that time, the role of a father has evolved to include
greater participation in a child’s day-to- day life.
According to the Library of
Congress “Wise Guide”, Sonora Dodd gets the credit for the day on which we
honor fathers. Dodd’s father was a
widower whose wife died in childbirth. Dobb, who was sixteen at the time,
helped her father raise her five younger brothers. She came up with the idea
for Father’s Day while listening to a sermon on Mother’s Day. She asked churches in her area to put
aside a Sunday in June (the month of her father’s birth) to celebrate
fathers.
While there was support for
Dodd’s idea, there was also opposition.
Some thought sentiment would be an affront to manliness. In 1916,
President Woodrow Wilson, who had signed the proclamation for Mother’s Day,
endorsed the idea, although he stopped short of signing a similar proclamation
for fathers. In 1924, the idea for
Father’s Day achieved a national boost from President Calvin Coolidge; Coolidge
publicly supported Father’s Day as a way to “establish more intimate relations
between fathers and their children and to impress upon fathers the full measure
of their obligations.” During
World War II, Americans began to associate Father’s Day with the honoring of troops.
Father’s Day finally received formal recognition in 1972 when President Richard
Nixon signed an official proclamation.
It is not surprising that Dodd
conceived the idea of Father’s Day while sitting in church because the
Judeo-Christian tradition uses the image of a father to describe God.
The metaphor of God as father
appears about twenty times in the Hebrew Scriptures, according to scholars who
count these sorts of things. God is the father of Israel or of its king. In the context of the salvation history
of ancient Israel, the metaphor expressed God’s steadfast love for the nation.
The Scriptures also portray God as a protective father of the defenseless,
typified in the widow and orphan.
The prophets compared the fatherly God to a potter, molding the
character of the people and guiding them along right paths.
In the New Testament, where there
are about one hundred seventy references to God as father, Jesus refers to God
as “Father” and calls God “Abba” or “Daddy”. In the “Our Father”, the most beloved of all Christian
prayers, Jesus teaches his followers to entrust themselves to their heavenly
father who longs to take care of them.
While the Bible is not a
parenting manual, the metaphorical language describing God as “Father” paints a
tender picture. A father in the biblical mode is present to the unfolding of his
child’s life from infancy through adulthood. Loving, wise, consistent and firm,
he attends to his child’s material and emotional needs.
The biblical representation of
father stands in sharp contrast to the “dummy down” dad portrayed in television
sit-coms. The dufus dad, exemplified in Homer Simpson, is immature, unaware,
and individualistic. Lacking insight and wisdom, he bumbles his way through his
child’s life.
Harry Chapin, in his classic 1976
hit “Cat’s in the Cradle”, described another type of father. The workaholic
father advances his career to the detriment of his relationship with his child.
Physically and emotionally absent, he fails to forge the father-child bond.
Thankfully, the majority of fathers
fall somewhere along this spectrum of extremes.
When Darwin posited his theory of
evolution, he wasn’t thinking about fathers, but the role of fathers is
definitely evolving. I see this
evolution at literacy programs where dads sit in circles with their toddler
singing nursery songs. I see it
when dads walk their child to and from school. Along with more traditional
activities like coaching ball, soccer or hockey, today’s dad is changing
diapers, reading stories, playing make-believe, and attending play dates, as
well as cooking, cleaning and shopping.
This is a good thing. Research in parenting indicates that
when fathers are actively involved with their children, the child develops
stronger language skills and has fewer behavioral problems; socially and
intellectually, the child thrives.
Coolidge would probably be
pleased to see fathers taking on new responsibilities and growing closer to
their children.
No longer content
to just “bring home the bacon”, more dads are providing their children with the
“daily bread” that nourishes body, mind and spirit. Granted, the majority of mothers still shoulder the bulk of
child-rearing responsibilities, but then evolution, even in parenting, is a
slow process.
