Fathers are Vital

In a world that continues to empower women and demean men, we are losing the importance of the male gender. Women are portrayed as more masculine and smart today than ever before. Men on the other hand are minimized and portrayed as more animalistic and unnecessary than ever before. The world highlights the optionality of fathers with things like sperm donors, government support programs for single mothers, at-work childcare, and the classic “everyone’s doing it” mentality. After all, if a woman wants to be a mother, why bother with the annoying accessory of a husband. However, this mentality is damaging for all touched by it. Good fathers are vital, not optional in the healthy development and supporting of a growing child and family.  

              Good fathers are pivotal in a number of aspects. Daughters and sons understand better how a healthy romantic relationship should function with a father in the home. Young women recognize how they should be treated by men and men by women in a safe environment. Sons are more structured and respectable when raised with a father in the home. Children can also obtain a stronger understanding of what our relationship with God, our Heavenly Father is like with a good earthly father around. Fathers like mother’s act as a teacher for various roles in life. With both parents in the home and positively involved in children’s lives, children will have twice the experience and knowledge to pull from and grow from.

              Up until about the 1800s, families were constantly around one another. Work was something that every member was involved in heavily. It wasn’t so much “work” as it was “life”. Both parents were very involved in the raising and teaching of their children. When the Industrial Revolution hit, work life separated from family life. The family structure itself was altered. Fathers had a harder time acting as the patriarch of the home seeing as he was now away from home working in factories for so much of the day. Often for forty plus hours a week. This left the mother and children at home to pick up the same amount of home work with less hands to do it. An increased amount of effort had to go into relationships between father and mother, and father and children. The potential for more tension in the home rose and mother and children were prone to more loneliness with the father away. Pretty soon children were also sent to work away from the home in the factories. If a factory could pay a child half the amount and get the same work that a man would accomplish, they would. The value of men dropped. Families no longer ran the home as a team. Women were left home doing “housework” and “life” became “work”.             

              A study of Yale University men and women they found that all of them had one common regret in regard to family life. Each of them wished that they had spent more time with their families and children. In America, I feel that we too often separate families from progress. Elderly are put into retirement homes and infants are set in a daycare system. We leave it to others to take care of our families. This sort of behavior is confusing and even unheard of in other parts of the world. In various Middle Eastern countries families will simply add additional stories to their homes as their family grows. The original parents will live on the bottom floor and each generation will live one level up from the previous one. As parents age and pass away, families will move down a floor. This keeps the family close and available to support and raise one another as they go though life together.

              Families are eternal. They are a Heavenly unit with a purpose. Each member has a role and a reason. This includes fathers. They are vital, not optional. We need fathers. If you don’t believe me, just ask God, our Heavenly Father.