While walking out of a certain airport to pick up my box at the baggage claim area, I passed by a young woman with her year-old baby in a cart. In front of the cart were rose flowers and an inscription “welcome home Dad from jail.” As other travelers walked up to the baggage claim area, I picked up my box and started heading home, reflecting on the scene I just saw. All through my journey back home, I kept reflecting on the deep love, care, and courage demonstrated by the young woman and her baby, standing in front of everyone, patiently waiting for her husband to come out. Although I may not have known the cause of him going to jail, what I kept reflecting on was the role of fatherhood in a family or in a free society.
From the creation account, God delineated the role man in his society. From the man, He created the woman to be his companion, gave them the responsibility to increase and multiply, fill the earth and subdue it. In other words, giving us an example of how to model society. A kind of an ecosystem of self-supporting units comprising of fathers, mothers, and children interacting and complimenting each other.
My primary focus in this article is to portray the role of fatherhood in a free society like ours. That is, the image of a true father in a family or society. Our modern society has come up with several concepts like “fatherlessness”, “born outside of marriage”, “dad-deprived and father absent”, “father involved and uninvolved”, and divorced, just to mention a few. Fatherlessness, among these concepts mentioned above, happens when children in a family or society grow without the figure of a caring and guiding father around them. Perhaps, the main causes of fatherlessness as we see today in our respective societies are divorce, single-parenting, and dad-deprivation.
Despite the dynamics of modern society, the figure of a responsible father in a family or society cannot be overemphasized. Some writers have noted that the lack of responsible father-figures within families in our societies has led to some of the breakdown in the relationships between single mothers and their children and issues related to suicide, aggression, juvenile detention rates, substance abuse, violence toward women, weapons abuse, drugs, child abuse, childhood obesity, and poor academic performance among children and youths. On the other hand, most children with responsible father-figures in their families have enjoyed the benefits of a healthy family. With the increase in divorce cases and single parenting, our society is already shifting her focus from the original plan of God, which is the healthy and mutually respectful living of father, mother, and children in the society.
I think that for the role of fatherhood to be felt these days, fathers should learn to be more directly involved in nurturing their kids and to be present. Such involvements like devoting more time to teaching their children the basic tenets of life, self-control, empathy, respect, good companionship, modeling best practices in peer group discipline, fear of God, and raising them according to the faith of the church, could help to shape their future. The list will not be complete without fathers showing love and respect to their wives. The image of a good father is a treasure to society. Let us all be good advocates of model fatherhood in our society.
by Fr. Charles M Onumaegbu
