FATHER YOUR CHILD
Anyone can father a child, but being a dad takes a lifetime. Fathers play a role in every child’s life that cannot be filled by others. This role can have a large impact on a child and help shape him or her into the person they become.
Fathers and Emotional Development
Fathers, like mothers, are pillars in the development of a child’s emotional well-being. Children look to their fathers to lay down the rules and enforce them. They also look to their fathers to provide a feeling of security, both physical and emotional. Children want to make their fathers proud, and an involved father promotes inner growth and strength. Studies have shown that when fathers are affectionate and supportive, it greatly affects a child’s cognitive and social development. It also instills an overall sense of well-being and self confidence.
Fathers Set the Bar for Relationships with Others
Fathers not only influence who we are inside, but how we have relationships with people as we grow. The way a father treats his child will influence what he or she looks for in other people. Friends, lovers, and spouses will all be chosen based on how the child perceived the meaning of the relationship with his or her father. The patterns a father sets in the relationships with his children will dictate how his children relate with other people.
Fathers and Their Daughters
Young girls depend on their fathers for security and emotional support. A father shows his daughter what a good relationship with a man is like. If a father is loving and gentle, his daughter will look for those qualities in men when she’s old enough to begin dating. If a father is strong and valiant, she will relate closely to men of the same character.
Fathers and Their Sons
Unlike girls, who model their relationships with others based on their father’s character, boys model themselves after their father’s character. Boys will seek approval from their fathers from a very young age. As human beings, we grow up by imitating the behavior of those around us; that’s how we learn to function in the world. If a father is caring and treats people with respect, the young boy will grow up much the same. When a father is absent, young boys look to other male figures to set the “rules” for how to behave and survive in the world.
Sooner or later, our kids will make us suffer. When they’re babies, their crying keeps us up at night. Later, their teenage shenanigans might rob us of more sleep. Some of us stay at jobs we hate so that our kids will never have to wonder where their next meal will come from. We can battle with our co-parents over issues like housework and discipline, testing love we might have once thought would last forever.
These stresses and sacrifices can be painful, but studies are finding one thing that can help us to weather them: a sense of purpose. That is to say, our long-term, meaningful goals as fathers.
A sense of purpose shapes day-to-day goals and behavior. Seeing a destination on the horizon helps us to lift our eyes over the dirty dishes and temper tantrums, to a future that is better than the present. Purpose makes that pile of dishes matter. It reminds us that we matter, if only to our kids. Purpose keeps us at home with them when we wish we were elsewhere.
Many fathers today add “nurturing” to their purpose, along with “providing.” In a discussion I hosted on my Facebook wall, a number of dads said their purpose was to be better than their fathers—and to raise kids who would be better than them. What they meant by this, more often than not, was to be physically and emotionally present in the lives of their children.
“I lost my dad a few months ago,” said Jason Avant, a dad in California. “Nowadays I find myself looking through the lens of my childhood, and I do my best to be everything he was, and everything he wasn’t.” San Francisco writer Andrew O. Dugas, one of those who defines his purpose as “to be a better father than mine was,” says: “My son turned out better than I did. Stronger. Tougher. Kinder. Smarter. Wiser.”
For many men, raising kids means that they need to make self-improvement and self-care part of their purpose. After the birth, “It was no longer acceptable for me to simply go through the motions,” said Blake Overbay, a sergeant with the Massachusetts Army National Guard. “I had to outwardly demonstrate that I was working to better myself. Like deliberate and exaggerated movements to warm-up before a workout.”