So, today is a day for reflecting on the significance of fatherhood. Which I will do by ignoring my kids while I write a blog post. Perhaps I’ve already failed!
The experience has certainly changed me. I don’t think any other experience would have been sufficient to mature me from adolescent into adult. I mean, I was already chronologically an adult well before having children, but my mental space was less serious, less focused, and too self-centered to really be considered adult.
Fatherhood is about sacrifice and leadership: sacrificing your own immediate self-interests for others; and considering their well-being such that you can lead them into a happy life of their own. Of course, long-term, this seems to be more rewarding to my own self-interest than if I had not become a father. (Not least of all because I got a Fry Daddy for Father’s Day!)
Thinking about it, I’d go beyond the family, and suggest that developing these qualities of sacrifice and leadership are beneficial to the health of the community at large. I look around Tippecanoe County and see that it is a thriving community in no small part because of those men I know (women too – but this is Father’s Day) who spend their time, energy, and money on projects that help the community even without being immediately beneficial to the particular individual.
And, again, these efforts have a tendency to provide long term rewards to the individual who finds himself with a fuller and more balanced sense of self coupled with, not incidentally, a better place to live; whether that better place is a vibrant, active household or a vibrant, active community or – ideally – both.
I’ve become engrossed in some of the Manosphere blogs. I think many of them overstate the perils of feminism and just flat act like victims (but manly ones!) at the erosion of male privilege; but, that said, I think there is value to their speaking up about the values of masculinity and fatherhood.
You don’t see a whole lot of Atticus Finch types in movies and television today. Instead, the buffoon-Dad is more the norm. I’m a huge Simpsons fan, so I’m not asking that this type of thing go away. But, I think the good Dads out there should take pride in it and not be shy about the value of their contributions to a healthy family.