The Joy of Being a Father

Through my personal experience in school where I teach, mothers tend to be in the limelight most of the time. You see them often in school - they bring their sons in the school, they fetch them afterwards, they approach you or consult you once in a while about how their sons are doing in class, and so many other petty concerns that have something to do with their sons. But what about the fathers? Are they not concerned about their sons? Their grades? Their school day activities? Etc? Do you think that they have no time to spare for their children? I think it is not the time or their presence in school that matters. More than anything else, the problem lies on how to be a father. Definitely, there is a difference in the perception of roles twenty-five years ago from fathers’ attitudes in the nineties. Gone are the days when child-rearing is the sole responsibility of the mother who is expected to stay at home. But these are aspects of parenting where the father and mother have different roles as stated by a well know clinical psychologist in the United States, Dr. Fitzhugh Dodson. He states that:

A growing child needs a model for feminine behavior and a model for masculine behavior. One parent cannot play both roles. Some aspects of fatherhood are interchangeable with similar aspects of motherhood. But certain phases are unique to the father and only he can play this part of the parental role. If he fails to fulfill this role, his wife cannot take over and do the job no matter how good the mother is.[1]

Fathers have to get involved with their sons. Some fathers might think that they are doing the wrong things or to get involved they might commit mistakes, precisely nobody teaches you how to become fathers or no agencies or companies teach such fathering. Fathers have to learn through experience, because as they go further (improving) they acquire skills and knowledge in fathering and they get along (farther) as they encounter demands. There are some ways to further improve in acquiring knowledge or skills in fathering.

The Father as a Role Model

It is difficult to have a good idea of what fatherhood is if we don’t understand, in so far as our limited intelligence can understand, what God is to us as Father. He is our model. He is the one who sets the standard in this. St. Paul has revealed to us that all fatherhood takes its title from Him; all true fatherhood. For this reason I bend my knees to the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, from whom all fatherhood in heaven and on earth receives its name (Eph. 3:14-15).

Professor Esther Esteban defines the word role as the proper or customary function, the part assumed by anyone; and modeling is the art of one who acts as a standard for imitation.

With each word, gesture, tone of voice, attitude, frown or smile; the father sends signal and message to the child. In effect, he is setting the example of how to live, love, hope, plan, pray and face life itself, with all joys and sufferings. The example is observed, judged, remembered and recalled someday.[2]

A well-known professor in Heights School in Washington, James Stenson pointed out what most children look up to in their father is their strength of character. He said that the term character is simply the integration into one personality of several fundamental strengths of mind and will. These are internalized, habitual, permanent habits and attitudes by which someone deals with life, in all circumstances. They have sometimes been called virtues: faith, hope, charity, prudence, justice, etc. If these terms sound familiar, that’s because you may have them in your childhood. Anyway, whether we call them virtues or simply strengths of character, they comprise the essence of what your sons admire most in you &emdash; strong character.

Children need a living manly example of firm character and conscience, a man who shows them how to live in the virtues we want most people to emulate: religious convictions, active considerateness, serious and loving responsibility, mostly over oneself.

Love of the wife as demonstrated by the father is easily felt: his appreciation for his wife’s sacrifices, hard work, and loving attention to details. What’s an even more important point, they show this appreciation in front of their children. Consciously or otherwise such a father draws the children’s attention to their mother’s outstanding qualities. He directs his children to share his gratitude and respect for Mom.

Furthermore, the father is helping the child attain his goals in relation to spiritual or moral development, that is, respect for human sexuality. The boys also learn to love others within the family. The need to satisfy the child’s emotional needs could result to the attainment of the goals related to the area of development. When he is given affection, attention, approval, and acceptance at home, he eventually learns the art of giving and sharing of appreciation and dignity of respect and affection through the father’s modeling.

The value for developing work habits and attitudes must also be needed if the boys are to attain self-confidence and achievement. The child should have his own comfortable place of work and a specific schedule devoted to schoolwork everyday. We have to stress the need for orderliness and to bring home the truth that God wants us to fulfill our duties responsibly and completely. A father who brings his child to the workplace is providing an opportunity to sense, quietly and unconsciously relating with others’ subordinates, cheerful working environments, and love of work among others.

Another role that the father plays is that of a friend.

The Father as a Friend

A good father is a hero to a friend and is the object of their lifelong devotion. He is not remote and unapproachable, a severe authority-figure. On the contrary, he is his children’s greatest friend, and unconsciously a model for all their other friendships. He is a source of happiness, confidence, humor, and wisdom.

Conversation is the most common activity at home. Fathers talk about their own childhood and family life, their job responsibilities, their courtship with Mom, their worries and concerns, their past mistakes and hilarious blunders, their relationship with people whom they admire, their opinions and their convictions and so on through the range of their mind. This does not mean that they bore their children or impose their viewpoints; sometimes the children don’t want to talk at all. But they’re patient and wait for an opening. As a result of this conversation, the children come to know their father’s mind inside and out.

Over time, they come to respect his experience and judgment. Of course such fathers listen to their children as well. They listen for what is unspoken and implied, they come to understand the changes taking place in their children’s minds and they steer their children’s judgment about people and affairs. They respect the children’s privacy. They praise them for their growth in character, showing their earnest expectations that the children will grow up to become great, honorable men and women, regardless for what they do for a living.

Of course, the father must earn a living and provide a dignified standard of living.

The Father as a Provider

The father provides for the development goals and needs of the child. This is because the child’s developmental needs are viewed in the context of totality: the physical, social, emotional, and spiritual (includes moral).

While the father explains the need to work for money to support their physical needs, hand in hand with it is teaching the following: to work honestly and that excessive wealth can corrupt people. As Scripture says, “riches blind us to earthly and eternal realities.” Another is that money is an instrument, a resource for the service of our love ones and those in need. Lastly, there is satisfaction of a job well done &emdash; the value of work.

Fathers should teach their children how to live poverty. One way is work alongside with their children at home, teaching the relationship between effort and results, along with the satisfaction for personal accomplishment. They are sparing in allowance. They make children wait things, and if possible earn them. They give generously of time and money to the needy, and they encourage the children to do the same. They budget and save for the future and thus, the father providing something to his children but nothing superfluous, not wanting the children to suffer but not spoiling them.

Next, let’s discuss the father as the son’s first teacher.

The Father as an Educator

It is oftentimes said that the parents are the first educators in their house. The Declaration on Education of the Second Vatican Council is explicit on the role. It says that:

Because parents have given life to their children, they are seriously obliged to educate them and therefore, they are the first and primary educators. This duty, that is educating the members of the family, is so important that, when it is lacking, it can hardly be substituted. It is then an obligation of the parents to create an atmosphere in the family inspired by love, by piety, towards man, and which favors an integrated personal and social dimension.[3]

Children have the potential and capacity for doing things, and it is only through effort that these potentials are developed and can reach a greater operative perfection. Certainly, the success of this effort depends on the help that the child receives from his parents. The word education is derived from two Latin words: ex ducere, earning, to lead from, cultivate. It means to make a man, a Christian and Saint out of a child who tends to consciously cooperate more and more as he ages. With grace of God, education also means projecting the image of Christ on humanity.

The duty of the father is focused in discovering and exposing the qualities of each child, on the other hand, working continuously toward their growth and unfolding and happy fruition. Indispensable, therefore, in this task is time &emdash; a dedication by the father of this constant time to full attention to his child’s daily growth.

From the very start, the fathers must know to what end or goal we are educating our children. And believe that we have develop in them how to be competent and confident.

The Father as an Authority Figure/Disciplinarian

Authority can be better explained by looking at its etymology. It is derived from auctor (author) which in terms comes from the word augure (to augment, to let grow). It has come to mean a power which serves to sustain and increase.

Dr. O. Otero, an expert in family education, further elaborates by saying that:

Personal authority is a positive influence which sustains and increases the autonomy and responsibility of each child. It is service to the children in its educative function, a service which implies the power to decide and to sanction, it is a help which consists in guiding the participation of the children in the life of the family and in directing their growing autonomy towards a responsible use of freedom. It is an essential component of the love for children that manifests itself in diverse ways and in various circumstances in parent-child relationship.[4]

The authority of the parents comes from God from whom all authority emanates. When children obey their parents and submit to them, they are obeying and submitting to God. Since it is the duty of the parents to educate their children, it is imperative that they have the power to enforce the rules of the house in order to be effective. When one has the duty to perform, he must have the power and ability to do it. Parents, therefore, have to know that they have the authority, corresponding to their responsibility as primary educator. And this authority has the capacity to exercise itself out of love for their children.

But then the positive steps in dealing with parental authority should have a close relationship and persistent efforts toward personal growth. On this constant personal struggle really depends the success we aim for. The right relationship between personal growth and exercise of authority is to us to be sought in the efforts made, and is not concentrated on results.

According to Dr. Otero,

This personal struggle in the process of developing oneself rests basically in prayer. A parent of a family who lives a life of faith; in their own education and in that of others dependent of them; makes use not only of human but also of supernatural means. Parents’ simplicity of life answers that they do not forget any of the means at their disposal, precisely because they know that development and prudent use of one’s dignity is no easy task.[5]

The object of parents’ education is freedom and responsibility of children.

Parents sometimes act as though they own their children: authoritarian. This is a species of authority that proceeds not from the aim of developing the child, but from the good pleasure, the ambition, the plans, and the prejudices, or whims of the parents. Given the rebellious, which is a type of authority generates, it inevitably ends in crisis; that is, in virtually inevitable defeat. The personal limitations that support this kind of authority are: arbitrariness, neglect or even contempt, and disregard for children, and wishful thinking and extravagance, infuriated reaction. [6]

Children should be governed as free and intelligent beings. The children have the corresponding duty to obey for as long as they are not asked to do something which is against the natural moral law. In other words, the right of the parents are not absolute rights.

There is a form of authoritarian/paternalism characterized by wanting to replace their child’s thinking, his decision and even his actions with the parent’s own, instead of understanding and guiding him in accordance with his own unique potentials. Such misguided authority is based on a false conception of the nature of love and freedom: it can lead to fear of a child’s failure, to complete lack of confidence in all educational methods and perhaps, in the child, to an indifferent attitude towards his own need for participation.[7]

The word discipline has fallen to ill-repute. Common usage has corrupted the word so that discipline today is used synonymously with punishment, most particularly corporal punishment. Punishment, instead of being synonymous to discipline should be a very minor part of the word. Punishment is only one of the means of enforcing discipline. Most parents have punished children at one time or another, sometimes, it seems necessary for the children’s safety. In general, however, punishment does not guide children toward building new behavior. Punishment also tends to build negative feelings in both individuals. If one must punish, the incident should immediately put behind one &emdash; forgive and forget.

Dr. Dodson pointed out that, “To discipline a child consists of teaching the child to behave in ways that the parents consider desirable and to avoid behaving in ways they consider undesirable. Discipline is a teaching process on the part of the parents, and a learning process on the part of the child.”[8]

Discipline therefore, is the process of training and learning that fosters growth and development. It comes from the same word as disciple: one who learns from or voluntarily follows a leader. The parents and teachers are the leaders, and the child is the disciple who learns from them the ways of life that leads to usefulness and happiness.[9]

Discipline should help children become self-guided and regulating so they can control their behavior and become independent. In this view, discipline is a process of guiding behavior. Parent’s role is to guide their children toward developing self-control, encourage them to be independent, meeting their intellectual, emotional, social, and spiritual needs, establishing expectations for them, organizing appropriate behaviors, arranging environments so self-discipline can occur.

I do believe that the goal of most parents is to make their children behave in socially acceptable and appropriate ways. Since this goal is never really fully achieved, parents should view guidance as a process of learning by doing. A child cannot learn to discipline himself by being told to sit still and behave. Just as no one learns to read by reading a book on the subject. Children need encouragement and opportunities to practice self-discipline.

The joy of fathering really depends on the development of the father in his role in parenting in collaboration with the mother; especially that of a role model, friend, provider, educator, and disciplinarian. And the effective exercise of these roles demands not only the personal effort in acquiring and practicing specific virtues but with the use of supernatural and natural means which is based on natural moral law. Through the guidance of the father, the individual child develops totally; body and soul; using all his powers such as the body senses, emotions, intellect, will to develop his talents in the service of others. To acquire the capacity to love only what is spiritually good and to strive towards what is good in life and beyond. This we call happiness and happiness is the ultimate end of parenting.

Notes:

1. Fitzhugh Dodson, How to Father, Signet Books, p. 7.
2. Esther Esteban, Education in Values: What, Why, and For Whom, Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, Inc. 1980, p. 109.
3. James Stenson, Successful Fathering, p. 6.
4. Oliveros P. Otero, Authority and Obedience, Manila: Sinag-Tala Publishers, Inc., p. 9.
5. Ibid. p. 11.
6. Ibid. p. 12.
7. Ibid. p. 13.
8. Dodson, op.cit., p. 46.
9. Elizabeth B. Hurlock, Developmental Psychology, Fifth Edition. McGraw-Hill Book Company, p. 380.