I’ve been thinking about a series of articles reflecting on fatherhood in our sex-saturated, post-feminist, sex-role-confused time. I think the confusion is best expressed by the title of this post. Just as the public schools seem to want all schoolchildren to be good little girls, so the culture seems to want all parents to be [...]
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Cultural pressure can be a good thing. It’s what keeps us from farting in public. But while our culture continues to exert appropriate pressure in some areas, it has, for the last few decades, been training men to be embarrassed about fatherhood. Little by little it’s been singling out the masculine, fatherly aspects of parenting [...]
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Kids often moan, “that’s not fair,” to which the typical dad might reply, “life’s not fair. Get over it.” While we should strive to be both just and fair, there are times when the two seem to conflict. Or at least what sounds like fairness can confict with justice. For example, “fairness” can mean giving [...]
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An important lesson a child needs to learn — especially before the teen years — is how to be discerning without being judgmental. By “discerning” I mean that a child needs to be able to size up other people to decide if they’re “the right sort” — the kind they should hang with or make [...]
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One of the amazing things about parenting is that while the human race has been raising children for umpteen thousands of years, we still don’t know how to do it. There’s no standard operational procedure. There’s no user’s manual. In every generation, green young adults go into it fresh, either completely ignorant, or with their [...]
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You’ve just come home from a hard day. The commute was murder. You’re grumpy and hungry and you want to rest for a few minutes before dinner. But Junior has other plans. With a mischevious grin he decides to test the limits — again — and climb onto the piano bench. You tell him to [...]
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A friend told me a story about a westerner who was visiting a friend in India. While they were chatting on the patio, the Indian man’s son was playing in the yard. Suddenly the Indian man turned to his son and said, “Son, be perfectly still.” To the westerner’s amazement, the child stopped. Then the [...]
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One of the sad undercurrents in our society is the notion that religion is for women. The sadder thing is that there’s a lot of truth in it. Many religions have been emasculated to keep them from offending the oh-so-sensitive. The whole thing is rather amazing when you think about it. Christianity is a blood [...]
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In a subsequent post I’ll talk about “preparing for adolescence,” Dr. Dobson’s tape series, but I want to start with the preparation that needs to occur way before adolescence. Following the theory that to be forewarned is to be forearmed — No … forget that. Let’s try a more down-to-earth, practical explanation. Remember when you [...]
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Focus on the Family has a series of tapes by Dr. Dobson called “preparing for adolescence.” The idea behind the series is that dad takes his son out for a weekend trip (or mom takes her daughter, but remember that these are reflections on fatherhood, not parenting) — camping, skiing, fishing, whatever — and on [...]
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