Father’s Day, which we will celebrate this weekend, is typically a lovely Sunday spent honoring manliness and fatherhood – except, of course, for the growing number of kids in America who don’t have a father.
You get the feeling that we are living through a movie called “O, Father, Where Art Thou?” The plot goes something like this: Boy meets girl, boy sleeps with girl, girl has baby, boy runs away, baby grows up, meets girl, girl has baby, and so on. It’s the typical Hollywood snoozer, without the merciful conclusion two hours down the road.
The problem is that Father’s Day is not a movie and the hypothetical plot is reality. It is an R-rated lifestyle peddled to a G-rated audience. “O, Father, Where Art Thou?” is life in America today – and you get the sense that on Father’s Day, we prefer to bury the problems facing the American family under a monument of bad ties. (Don’t worry about the illegitimacy rate, men; here’s a tie!)
The truth is that if Mother’s Day can be used to launch a national campaign against breast cancer, surely Father’s Day can be a day on which the country sits down and talks seriously about crumbling families and what we can do about them.
Let’s give the day a stronger sense of purpose. After all, Father’s Day has always been an afterthought. Motherhood, being something akin to apple pie, obviously deserves its own day of national celebration. In fact, it wasn’t until Sonora Smart Dodd, hot for egalitarianism, realized the need for a Father’s Day that the holiday was first recognized in Washington state in 1910.
Yet while Father’s Day has never been so fervently observed as Mother’s Day, fatherhood is every bit as important as motherhood. You just wouldn’t know it today. These days, a father is like a garage: It’s splendid that you have one, but even if you don’t, you know you’ll still have a place to park your car.
In other words, having a dad is great but if you don’t, it’s nothing to really fret about. That’s the usual rationale behind same-sex marriage, gay adoption, no-fault divorce and having children outside of marriage. And those arguments are certainly working. Between 1980 and 2000, Norway’s illegitimacy rate skyrocketed from 14 percent to 50 percent. In America during the same period, the rate of births to unwed mothers rose from 18 percent to 33 percent. In a different era, parenthood was inseparable from marriage. That’s just not true today.
The social consequences, as we have learned, are enormous. As British philosopher and author Jonathan Sacks puts it, “Children who grow up with only one of their biological parents … are more likely to do badly at school, leave school early, become unemployed, and fail to make successful marriages.” And while all of that is empirically true, there is also something experiential a child misses out on when his or her father is absent.
There is something tangible and meaningful about the joy I found – and still find – from playing ball with my dad. There is the sense that we aren’t just throwing a football back and forth. The ball is only a medium for a powerful, intergenerational conversation. Often we talk about football and food – hardly deep thinking – but it is never really about football or food. My dad isn’t just teaching me how to throw spirals; he is subtly showing me how to be a man.
As every father knows, sons mimic their dads. They ape behavior and reflect values. If dad burps out loud, it won’t be long before Johnny does, too. If dad brings home flowers to Johnny’s mom, it’s likely that Johnny will treat his wife with the same sort of kindness and respect. There’s a magical transaction between fathers and sons – and daughters, for that matter – that cannot be replicated. And there is something shameful about a society that deprives children of this transaction.
Fatherhood is not a convenience, it is a necessity – and the emotional, intellectual and spiritual growth of a child depends on it. I asked my own father what the big deal is about fatherhood. He replied, as only a father can, “It just does what motherhood can’t do.” Perhaps that’s what it all comes down to: Dads do for kids what moms can’t do. Dads show us that manliness isn’t machismo and that it’s cool to be nice to girls.
On this Father’s Day, I honor all fathers for doing that something special that mothers just can’t do.
Chris Rawlings (christopher.rawlings @colorado.edu) graduated in May from the University of Colorado at Boulder with a degree in political science.
