The importance of Fathers
Need we be reminded of something so vital as a parent’s role? Yes…everyday(!)…in this cultural climate. And especially if it’s the role of Dad, because roles have been re-evaluated and malehood has been redefined in the aggressive feminization of the culture, and it’s done a lot of damage.
Three things I want to point out, in a field of many commentaries and news stories on the subject.
One, this story on MercatorNet about the danger of media misreporting on family ties in the Shawn Hornbeck kidnap and recovery case. We heard a lot of theories about him and his kidnapper, but little about the boy’s home life before.
Shawn Hornbeck does not have what most people would call a normal family background…How much did Shawn know about this sad family history? How much did it impinge on his life and affect him emotionally? At what stage did Craig Akers enter his life? We don’t know. What we do know is that Shawn grew up bearing his own father’s name, a daily reminder of the ambiguity of that word, “dad”, which could have prepared him for the time when Michael Devlin would come along and say, “Call me Dad.”
That Shawn went along with this fiction may well have been the result of compulsion and terror. On the other hand, it could indicate a certain casualness towards the term arising from his experiences. In itself, this says nothing about how well Mr Akers has played the father role, let alone how good a mother Pam Akers has been. Both give every sign of strong attachment to the boy — something that comes through in photos of their reunion. They deserve a lot of credit for their efforts to find Shawn, which included running a website, and never giving up hope. Nor is it a question of blaming Shawn for not trying to get home.
Some of the theories use this case to unweave the civilization-old bonds that inherently hold families, whether they are together or not. And some of it devalues the intricacies of family roles. This article addresses that.
The fact remains that broken family ties leave their mark on a child. To explain Shawn Hornbeck’s behaviour by asserting, as O’Hagan does, that it shows how fragile parent-child bonds in general really are, is reckless, and unbelievable. To blame it all on intimidation seems out of kilter with the facts. We might at least admit the possibility that having a second dad made it easier for Shawn to comply with Devlin’s game of being his third.
The reporting on that case prompted one of the best ‘Talking Points’ segments I’ve seen Bill O’Reilly do on Fox News (the video is there, but not the transcript). The topic: Fathers. O’Reilly said that “every American father” has to be a protector, a warrior, for his children, and to tell children that no matter what, he will be there to defend them. He emphasized that the world is full of evil and danger, and children are looking for security. A father’s influence has to overcome any outside influence, O’Reilly stressed, and he has to be a bodyguard and champion for his children.
“You have to set up a zone of authority and fairness,” O’Reilly stressed, and he added that children will respect the strength of character of their father. “It falls upon fathers to be knights, and at times avengers,” who will rescue their children from evil. If men do that, he concluded, it will dramatically reduce the likelihood that children will fall prey to it.
Great commentary. Strong and commanding. We need this in the social commentary again.
And we need fathers like Chris Gardner. He’s the main character, together with his son, of the movie “The Pursuit of Happyness” in movie theaters right now. I saw it yesterday - it was wonderfully inspiring. Actor Will Smith plays the role of Gardner, a man who overcame poverty and homelessness — while caring for his young son — through intelligence, conviction, dogged determination, and incredible love. His commitment to fatherhood, to raising and providing for his son, was the entire story. It’s an awesome story about human dignity.
Gardner’s story really makes you think about a lot of things we take for granted. Do you even think about the constitutional right to “the pursuit of happiness”? (To find out why it’s spelled “happyness” in the title, please see the movie. It’s so worth it.) That right is tied to human dignity, and Chris Gardner made it his motivational force — not to be handed something he claimed under an ‘entitlement’ mentality, but to be given the chance to succeed with his own efforts and intelligence. That’s all he asked, and that’s all he needed. I won’t tell you more, in case you go see the movie….except this. Chris Gardner is an awesome father.
None of this overlooks or disregards the importance of Mothers. But somehow, I think we ‘get’ that, for the most part. I think it’s still a ‘given.’ Even though women’s roles have been increasingly prominent across the professional spectrum, and the childrearing part has gone through some public relations mishandling, Mother is still and always will be the innate nurterer and caretaker. And Father is the primordial protector.
