Fathers Be Fathers

By Steve Garbe

LIFE MATTERS
The Newsletter of the Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Rockford
Patricia Pitkus Bainbridge, Director Rev. David A. Peck, Spiritual Director
555 Colman Center Drive Rockford, Illinois 61108 815.877.LIFE
www.rockforddiocese.org/respectlife
June 2006 Volume v no.9

What's a dad to think? How does he know what his role in the family is? How does he exercise his role? Our society and our culture give us many differing visions of a father's role. Sorting through those visions and finding the one that matches God's plan for the family is the major challenge for us dads these days.

We live in a time when there are many attacks on fathers and on the role of the father in the family. The sitcoms on television with a few exceptions generally portray Dad as hopelessly befuddled or easily fooled and manipulated. The days of "Father Knows Best" and "Leave It To Beaver" are long gone, at least in TV Land. Now we have Ray Romano instead of Jim Anderson and Jim Belushi instead of Ward Cleaver. So where do we get our role models?

How do dads learn to be fathers?
Ideally, we learned how to be dads from our own fathers. But many of us had fathers who didn't completely live up to the standards of Jim Anderson or Ward Cleaver. My own father worked long hours, five and half days a week. I always thought that he wasn't around much, that he was too busy earning the money to support my mom and the six of us children. Looking back on it now, though, I have come to realize that he was always there for my high school football games, the home games, at least. He was even there for the non-varsity games that were played after school on weekdays. I learned from this that a dad takes delight in the activities of his children and I have tried to be there for my kids too.

Dads should be the final authority in discipline matters. Of course, moms discipline, but dads shouldn't abdicate to mom, nor should they overrule her. When I was about six years old we lived in Chicago. One day, some of he older boys in the neighborhood were going to the corner drug store to get a candy bar and I wanted to go also. I asked my mom if I could go but she said "no." It was close to dinnertime. No problem. I went outside and met my dad as he walked home from work. I asked him if I could go and he said "OK." Life was good. Now I was just like the bigger boys going to the corner store. When I got back from the store Dad was waiting for me to explain why I hadn't told him the whole truth. Turns out if he had known that Mom had already said no he would never have said yes. I learned from this that Dad and Mom were a team and they weren't very happy when you tried to divide them. I also learned that Dad would back up Mom's discipline and add some of his own if I tried to outsmart her.

Role Models
But what's the ideal role model for a dad? There are many roles that a dad must fulfill. He must support his family. He should be a leader and not leave everything to his wife. He is also a teacher. I learned about hard work and doing your best from my dad. He also taught me about the importance of going to Sunday Mass. A dad is a protector and a defender. When I was sick in school Dad was the one who came to bring me home. There are other roles that he didn't carry out so well and I have only lately realized the importance of some of them. And I have not always done so well myself.

When our son was in eighth or ninth grade he was on a traveling soccer team. They had a weekend tournament in St. Louis. The team did better than I expected and had to stay an extra day for another game. I should have been home that last day for work but I didn't want to leave my son in St. Louis to tag along with one of the other families. I wrongly solved the problem by calling in sick for work. About a year later, my son used that incident in an essay about integrity. He thought that I had demonstrated integrity by not leaving him alone in St. Louis. He didn't realize that true integrity meant that we should have missed the last day of that tournament. Oh the things our children learn when we think they aren't watching. I resolved not to give that lesson ever again.

Protector and defender of the family
I think I have done some things right. I have always seen one of my primary roles as that of protector and defender of my family. I tell our children that God made me responsible for them. And that someday I am going to have to answer to Him for the way I carried out that responsibility. When our oldest daughter was sixteen she had a group of six or eight girls that always hung out together. Somebody got the idea to have a slumber party to celebrate the birthday of one of the other girls. No big deal. Girls had slumber parties all the time.

The catch was that the girls wanted to rent a room at a Holiday Inn that had an indoor pool. They were going to spend the night there splashing in the pool whenever they wanted, with no adults present. Well, I told our daughter to tell her friends that she would not be able to go. I told her that I trusted the girls and knew that they would behave themselves. But I also told her that I had no way of knowing who might be in the room next to theirs. And if I couldn't be there to protect her then she couldn't go. The girls tried to negotiate with me a little and suggested that the older sister of the birthday girl could stay with them. Since the older sister was only nineteen that didn't ease my mind any, so I still said no. The plans for the slumber party at the Holiday Inn got cancelled. What really surprised me was one of the other moms later told me how glad she was that I had said no. She didn't want her daughter to go either, but she didn't know how to say no. See, mothers need the fathers of their children to back them up. And they would prefer that sometimes the father would even take the lead.

The Good Shepherd
So now where do I look for the ideal role model? For the fourth Sunday of Easter we heard St. John's Gospel about the Good Shepherd. He is my role model now. The Good Shepherd lays down his life for his sheep (John 10:11). A father lays down his life for his family. The Good Shepherd knows His sheep and His sheep know Him (John 10:14). A father knows his children. He knows what they need and when they need to be protected. Sometimes he says "no" because that is the best way to protect them. I said to my children that God gave me the responsibility for protecting my family. Along with that responsibility, He gave me the authority to protect my family. The modern portrayal of fatherhood tries to convince us that we don't have any authority. Society wants fathers to abdicate their responsibilities. It wants to divide fathers from the mothers of their children. That is why divorce is so prevalent in our society. That is why there are so many single mothers, each one trying to be both mother and father to her children.

In so many cases, fathers have abandoned their children because they have forgotten how to be fathers or they never knew how. Don't accept the depiction of fatherhood in the sitcoms. Don't let the secular world fool you into thinking that you don't have the authority to protect and lead your family. Don't think that God is going to let you out of the responsibility of being a father. In the aviation business we have a saying, "Captains be captains." That means that the captain of the aircraft has the authori ty and the final responsibility for the safe operation of the flight and the safety of all his passengers. That authority is given to the captain by Federal Aviation Regulations. The saying means that the captain must use the authority given to him to fulfill his responsibility. If he doesn't fulfill his responsibility he will have to answer to a review board and perhaps even a court.

A father's authority comes from a source much higher than the captain's and so does his responsibility. If he doesn't fulfill his responsibility to protect his family he will have to answer to the highest court of all. Fathers be fathers!

LIFE MATTERS is published monthly by the Respect Life Office of the Diocese of Rockford. It is sent to all priests, seminarians, religious sisters prayer team members, and parish respect life coordinators. Individual subscriptions may be obtained for a donation of $15.00 per year. This publication may be copied so long as it is done in full. It may be quoted so long as proper citation is provided with the quotation. 2006 Respect Life Office-Diocese of Rockford