PARENTING

As a father has compassion for his children, so the Lord has compassion for those who fear him. (Psalm 103:13) So deeply do we care for you that we are determined to share with you not only the gospel of God but also our own selves, because you have become very dear to us... You are witnesses, and God also, how pure, upright, and blameless our conduct was toward you believers. As you know, we dealt with each one of you like a father with his children, urging and encouraging you and pleading that you lead a life worthy of God, who calls you into his own kingdom and glory. (1 Thessalonians 2:5-12) David therefore pleaded with God for the child; David fasted, and went in and lay all night on the ground. (2 Samuel 12:16) And when the feast days had run their course, Job would send and sanctify [his children], and he would rise early in the morning and offer burnt offerings according to the number of them all; for Job said, 'It may be that my children have sinned, and cursed God in their hearts.' This is what Job always did. (Job 1:5) When you depart from me today you will meet two men by Rachel's tomb in the territory of Benjamin at Zelzah; they will say to you, 'The donkeys that you went to seek are found, and now your father has stopped worrying about them and is worrying about you, saying: "What shall I do about my son?"' (1 Samuel 10:2) Things that we have heard and known, that our ancestors have told us. We will not hide them from their children; we will tell to the coming generation the glorious deeds of the Lord... that the next generation might know them, the children yet unborn, and rise up and tell them to their children, so that they should set their hope in God, and not forget the works of God. (Psalm 78:3-7) Fathers, do not provoke your children, or they may lose heart. (Colossians 3:21) Fathers, do not provoke your children to anger, but bring them up in the discipline and instruction of the Lord. (Ephesians 6:4) Discipline your children while there is hope; do not set your heart on their destruction. (Prov 19:18) [A bishop or overseer] must manage his own household well, keeping his children submissive and respectful in every way. (1 Timothy 3:4)

~~

As I type this chapter The Bulletin/Newsweek magazine (March 8, 1994) has just arrived. The cover story: 'Kids Need Both Parents: Forget the trendy view that single women provide adequate parenting. They don't.' Two events in my life as a father have indelibly imprinted themselves on my memory (and on my conscience). One night when Jan and I were reading in bed our fourteen year old son Paul came into our room. Precised, the conversation went like this: 'Dad, you love the church more than you love the family, don't you?' 'What makes you think that, Paul?' 'Well, when we're having a family-time and someone from the church comes with a problem, you leave us to attend to them, and we may not see you any more that night. But when you're counseling someone in your study, we can't interrupt you... So the church can interrupt the family, but the family can't interrupt the church, so the church is more important than the family.' What would you have said? Here was my lame response: 'Paul, you and I do lots of things together. Most fathers are not around for a significant chunk of the day when they have to earn a living. I'm actually around more than most.' His response: 'Yes, you're around, but I often think your head is somewhere else.' That week we installed a telephone-answering machine and put notes on the front door when we were having family-time. But it was too late for Paul. His hatred of the church persists until this day, twenty years later. Actually, my problem as Paul's dad went deeper. He was a well-put-together kid, and although we played games together, we didn't often spend one-on-one time talking together. I didn't realize he desperately needed that. Of course he didn't ask for it (his dad was busy) but he shouldn't have had to ask. I should have realized that growing boys need to talk to their dads as the key to their initiation into manhood. Now why didn't I know that? Simple: my own father (according to my memory) never ever had any worthwhile conversation with me. I cannot remember ever exchanging more than half a meaningful sentence with him. Ever. He was a good man, a faithful provider, a diligent Bible student (and secretary of the little Brethren Assembly we attended three times every Sunday), but he didn't talk to me. My earliest memories of him were during the war when he came home dressed in a soldier's uniform. He was very handsome, I thought. I remember him at night studying to pass Public Service exams to get ahead because he had dropped out of school early. His father was a cleaner in a factory, and didn't talk to his son either... My second 'aha!' experience occurred half way into a study-year in Canada. Jan went out to work and I was at home each afternoon when our younger daughters, Amanda and Lindy, came home from school. They had a snack and told me all about their day. It was wonderful! When Jan came home, however, they'd already told their stories, so over dinner I had to extract them again for Jan's benefit. Often I heard myself saying, 'Darling, you've been so privileged over all these years to be there when the kids came home. I'm jealous!' When you hear `So-and so's a success' what do you think of? His home and marriage? Unlikely - usually it's his career. What nurtures the family unit is in conflict with what maximizes personal development. And yet the highest happiness on earth is in marriage and family. Every man who is a happy husband and father is a successful man even if he's failed in everything else. I like the story about a man who came to his friend Carl Jung, saying enthusiastically, 'I've been promoted!' Jung would say, 'I'm very sorry to hear that; but if we all stick together, I think we will get through it.' If a friend said ashamedly, 'I've just been fired,' Jung would say 'Let's open a bottle of wine; this is wonderful news; something good will happen now.' Fathers in the industrialized world have generally failed to integrate competent fathering with 'breadwinning'. But that's not a new problem. Robert Bly (Iron John) points out that there are no good fathers in the major stories of Greek mythology, and very few in the Old Testament. Peter Sellers, in The Optimists of Nine Elms has old Sam grunting 'It's got nothing to do with working or making money. It's the way of the world, making fools of us all. And what for? What did kids want? Their parents. What did their parents want? Kids. But what did they do? They let themselves get shanghaied into working so hard to make things better for their kids that their kids never see them. And they never see their kids. Stupid blinking world', belched old Sam. 'Stupid blinking parents. You only know how to say "Don't do this," and "Don't do that", and "No, no, you can't".' 'Well, you can,' old Sam said, 'that's what it's all about. It's not just filling their bellies with bread and butter. What about a bit of bread and butter for up here?' he demanded and banged his head with his fist to make his point. Fathers, your family is the most precious possession you have. Take time to recognise how important each member of the family is to you, and communicate that. All members of your family need to know that you care about them. You'll be surprised at how many family 'problems' evaporate when you communicate warmth and love and trust to your family. Quality time with children is not merely spending time, but wasting time with them. The serendipitous moment when a child says 'Hey Dad', 'Hey Mum' can't be planned - you've got to be around when it happens. Modern dads are often bigamous until they're into their forties - married to their job as first priority. A spate of books about 'Absent Fathers Lost Sons' is pointing to a trend for boys not understanding what it means to be masculine because Dad isn't home enough, doing interesting and instructive things with their younger and teenage sons. Does a teenager really want his Dad? Yes, if a strong relationship was built between them in earlier years. And so does a teenage daughter. At puberty most girls have as their #1 question: 'Am I attractive to fellas?' The girl's father is the representative male, and if Dad gives the message, 'Hey, how did I deserve a gorgeous daughter like you? There's some lucky young fellow wandering the earth...' the daughter's self-esteem gets a real assist. Future marital happiness for a woman depends as much - sometimes more - on her previous relationship with her Dad, as with her husband. A few years ago Paul gave me psychoanalyst Guy Corneau's book, Absent Fathers, Lost Sons. Corneau believes we have to rediscover 'natural religion', and you may have some questions about that. But his central thesis is that a man is born three times in his life - born of his mother, born of his father, and finally born of his own deep self. 'Christ referred to it when he said that he knew neither his father nor his mother, even though his parents were in the crowd... Men's mourning for the unrealistic expectations they had of their fathers, and the solitude this mourning imposes upon them, are experiences that liberate them. Their suffering serves as an initiatory mutilation; it forces them to confront the reality of the objective world...' [Boston: Shambhala, 1991, p. 181] [70] Corneau's 'aha' experience came not from his counseling practice so much as from a workshop he conducted with men. He asked them 'Do you feel like a man?' Not one of them answered in the affirmative. The problem? Their fathers were spiritually and emotionally absent from their sons as they grew up. Sons who haven't been given adequate fathering tend to experience confusion about their sexual identity; their sense of self-esteem is unsteady; they repress their aggressivity and their inquisitiveness; they have trouble respecting moral values... Lacking a father, says Corneau, is like lacking a backbone. A whole generation of sons is crying out, as Jesus did on the cross, 'My father, my father, why have you forsaken me?' So, dad, your kids need you more than you may realize!

Child psychologist Dr Urie Bronfenbrenner was once asked 'What is the key ingredient in the successful development of a human being?' Without hesitation he replied, 'Someone, some adult, has to be crazy about the kids.' We all know what he meant. Our children need 100 percent of us. I can't have one eye on the television and one eye on Sarah's homework. You can't 'listen' to your children when you're still replaying in your mind the big staff meeting at work. Kids have great antennae. They know where they stand in our priorities. Gary Bauer, Our Journey Home: What Parents Are Doing to Preserve Family Values, Dallas: Word Publishers, 1992, pp.127. [92] It is little more than a month since I was handed this living heap of expectations, and I can feel nothing but simple awe... I have got a daughter, whose life is already separate from mine, whose will already follows its own directions, and who has quickly corrected my woolly preconceptions of her by being something remorselessly different. She is the child of herself and will be what she is. I am merely the keeper of her temporary helplessness. Laurie Lee, 'The Firstborn' quoted in Alexandra Towle (ed.), Fathers, Artarmon, NSW: Harper & Row, 1986, p.214. [79] David Blankenhorn of the Institute for American Values has pointed out that the phrase 'good family man' has almost disappeared from our popular language. This compliment was once widely heard in our culture - bestowed, to those deserving it, as a badge of honor. Rough translation: 'He puts his family first.' Ponder the three words: 'good' (moral values); 'family' (purposes larger than the self); and man (a norm of masculinity). Yet today within elite culture, the phrase sounds antiquated, almost embarrassing... Contemporary American culture simply no longer celebrates, among its various and competing norms of masculinity, a widely shared and compelling ideal of the man who puts his family first. David Blankenhorn, 'What Do Families Do?' paper presented at Stanford University, November 1989, p.19, quoted in Dr. James Dobson and Gary L. Bauer, Children at Risk: Winning the Battle for the Hearts and Minds of your Children, Dallas: Word Publishing, 1990, p.166. [109] In addition to purely physical power, of course, fatherhood represents a great deal of psychological power in a child's life. Because your child sees you as a successful, dynamic member of the world he [or she] wants to enter, you have the power to shape significantly what your child will become. By using the power to educate, to set limits, to make decisions, you will influence much about your child's personality. Unlike personal power, nurturance, the ability to protect and comfort a child, has been an undervalued facet of masculinity in our society. Many men believe they may express nurturance toward their children only by protecting them from outside dangers or by economically providing for the family and not through a personal, tender relationship with the child. They don't see it as masculine and thus don't see it as a natural part of their father power. Children, male and female, possess a natural tendency to give and respond to tenderness - from both parents. If you allow nurturance to be a totally feminine domain in your family, you can hurt both your sons and your daughters. Rigid, strict, punitive fathers compel their sons to stifle tender feelings and become harsh and unloving themselves. Such fathers make their daughters feel that men are not tender creatures, that only harsh men are masculine. To associate nurturance with femininity is a common mistake in American society. Indeed, usually we call it 'mothering' instead of 'parenting.'...The father crooning to his infant may not feel himself quite the masculine male. Rather than seeing it as weakness, you should adopt the attitude that you are showing nurturance-from-strength. You should realize that you are actually evidencing power and competence by showing your children how to throw a ball or by cuddling them. Henry Biller and Dennis Meredith, Father Power, NY: David McKay Co Inc., 1974, p.104. [297] Maybe you're a working parent because you don't want to starve, or because you want your child to go to college, or because you want some of life's extras for yourself, or because the satisfaction of the business world is essential for your own well-being. No matter what your reason, here you are, right in the middle of a balancing act. Caryl Waller Krueger, Working Parent, Happy Child: You Can Balance Job and Family, Nashville: Abingdon Press, 1990, p.13. [62] Almost all the fathers who attended the birth reached an ecstatic peak of emotion: a personal Everest. Often this was at the moment of birth itself, sometimes it came an hour or two later as the shock passed through their system. Then for some while afterwards, their behaviour was manic, disordered, high... 'I felt like an astronaut who'd landed on the moon.' Even the more withdrawn ones became voluble, often drawing total strangers into eager conversation. So powerful was the feeling that almost every man cried. Some did this quite openly, some brushed away the tears or sought to conceal them. The taboo against men's tears is fierce, and for many this was the first time they had cried since they were small children themselves. We checked the accuracy of this by observing fathers at twenty successive births. Eighteen were crying. The other two were numbed; perhaps their tears came later... Most men will become fathers. They will not receive all that much of a cultural bequest to help them in the art and science of the role: how dads become dads, and how they might emerge as better ones. The old strategies are changing. Brian Jackson, Fatherhood, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984, pp.121-122. [195] The most delicate and important questions... were about male sensibility when then child entered his world. I often found that I was one of the few people, sometimes the only one, to whom the man had spoken his feelings. He may not have done this with the woman ('I never knew you thought that' was a common interjection in the interviews), perhaps because she excluded him, or did not expect it of him or was obviously much better at such discussion herself. He hardly ever explored his private response with male colleagues at work. Coversation there was ritual, stylized, public - wages, sport, weather, holidays, politics, the job in hand ('My mates just didn't want to know', 'Don't know whether they were bored or embarrassed, may be just plain not interested'). I doubt if that was wholly so. Women inherit a culture which enables them to express intimate feelings. The mothers talk openly, freely and at length, between themselves about the minutiae and sensation of parenthood. Not every woman will use this chance, but nevertheless it is there, and the mothers are far more practiced, skilled, and confident than the men in discussing and sharing the delights and depressions of parenthood. This does not mean that the fathers care or feel any less. They are anxious to express fatherhood. But they often met dilemmas. One was their lack of practice in articulating the gentler feelings, whether in word, touch or action... The first-time father needed a new vocabulary of expression if he was to attune his private with his public self. Perhaps the mothers, sharing intimate life, had always known this of him: voiceless love in the dark... The tap-roots of fatherhood run deep. The image I take away is of men in tears at the birth, and yet feeling they had to disguise them. The question I most remember asking is 'When did you last cry?', knowing that so often it would be countered with 'Not since I was a child myself.' To release the full force of fatherhood will mean breaking the masculine taboo on tenderness. Brian Jackson, Fatherhood, London: George Allen and Unwin, 1984. pp.134-135. [349] Time-budget studies conducted up through the 1980's consistently show that fathers spend about one-fifth the amount of time as mothers on total domestic work, including child care. Moreover, in North America this difference remains unaffected by the mother's employment status outside the home. A great many popular arguments against mothers returning to the paid workforce center around the so-called deprivation of parental contact children will suffer as a result. Yet time-budget studies show that mothers, on the average, do not spend less time with their children when they have outside employment. They simply cut down on other activities they consider less important, including house cleaning, hobbies, socializing with friends, and even sleeping. By contrast, the average North American father, while quite competent to parent, actually performs parenting tasks only for ten to thirty minutes per day. And most of this, it turns out, is taken up by chauffering activities or 'keeping an eye on them' while watching television. Perhaps the greatest irony of all is that many divorced fathers report spending more time with their children after they have retained only visiting rights than they did when they lived in the same household with them. Mary Stewart van Leeuwen, Gender and Grace: Women and Men in a Changing World, England: Inter-Varsity Press, 1990, pp.159-160. [198] Man is the key to a happy family life because a woman by nature is a responding creature. Some temperaments, of course, respond more quickly than others, but all normal women are responders. That is one of the secondary meanings of the word submission in the Bible. God would not have commanded a woman to submit unless he had instilled in her a psychic mechanism which would find it comfortable to do so. The key to feminine response has only two parts - love and leadership. I have never met a wife who did not react positively to a husband who gave her love and leadership. Deep within a woman lies a responding capability that makes her vulnerable to that combination. It is so powerful, in fact, that many respond when they are only given love. (This is less likely when a woman is subjected only to leadership.) The combination of love and leadership is unbeatable. An interesting facet of that two-sided key is that most men must consciously work on one or the other. The temperament which naturally exudes love must consciously make an effort to exercise consistent leadership. By contrast, the man gifted in leadership must concentrate upon a regular display of love. Tim LaHaye, Understanding the Male Temperament, Old Tappan, NJ: Fleming H. Revell Company, 1977, p.178. [205] No man can possibly know what life means, what the world means, what anything means, until he has a child and loves it. And then the whole universe changes and nothing will ever again seem exactly as it seemed before. Lafcadio Hearn quoted in Alexandra Towle (ed.), Fathers, Artarmon, NSW: Harper & Row, 1986, p.211. [40] There is considerable evidence of the impact - for good and bad - of family life on children. Consider the intense bitterness which Germaine Greer expresses towards her parents in Daddy, We Hardly Knew You. Cut by her father's abandonment of her to go to war, her anguish is intensified by his subsequent failure to want to know her and show her affection: 'Some children can remember their fathers reciting Urdu poetry or Marlowe, or teaching them to recognise birds and butterflies, to spot trains, to play chess or cricket. But you, Daddy dear? Not a curve-ball, not a cover-drive, not a card-trick. Not a maxim. Not a saw, adage or proverb. Except, "You're big enough and ugly enough to take care of yourself".' Kevin Andrews, 'The Family, Marriage and Divorce', in The Australian Family, quarterly journal of the Australian Family Association, Volume 13, No 4, December 1992, p.18. [125] Lily and I regard ourselves as our children's servants. It is for this reason that we do not expect - except in our more immature moments - any great gratitude from them. They are entitled to our service; it is our position to serve them. It is our expectation that they themselves will grow into servanthood - that having been served and having role models for service, they will be able to serve their children and the world in turn... We would hardly serve our children well if we did everything they wanted, obeyed their every whim... And wherever the decisions are made, that's where the locus of power resides. M. Scott Peck with Marilyn Von Walder and Patricia Kay, What Return Can I Make?, London: Arrow Books, 1985, pp.55-56. [107] Three hundred years ago Jonathan Edwards, a dynamic Calvinistic preacher, was largely responsible for the Great Awakening in this country... [He] married a godly woman, and over the past three hundred years his descendents have included: 265 college graduates, twelve college presidents, sixty-five university professors, sixty physicians, one hundred clergy... thirty judges, three Congressmen, two Senators, and one Vice President of the United States. Sociologists have compared the effects of Jonathan Edwards' life and marriage to those of another man living at the same time: Max Juke - a derelict and ungodly vagabond who married a woman of similar character. Over the generations, their union has produced: three hundred children who died in infancy, 310 professional paupers, 440 crippled by disease, fifty prostitutes, sixty thieves, seven murderers, and fifty-three assorted criminals of other varieties. D. James Kennedy, Learning to Live with the People You Love, Springdale, PA: Whitaker House, 1987, p.75. [132] Armand Nicholi, a clinical professor of psychiatry at Harvard medical school, has studied the literature on the question of parental absence and children's well-being. The literature spans over 40 years of research and study. His conclusion is this: 'What has been shown over and over again to contribute most to the emotional development of the child is a close, warm, sustained and continuous relationship with both parents.' [Emphasis in original] Nicholi goes on to make this observation: 'One other comment about this research. In addition to the magnitude of it, the studies taken as a whole paint an unmistakably clear picture of the adverse effects of parental absence. Yet this vast body of research is almost totally ignored by our society. Why have even the professionals tended to ignore this research? Perhaps the answer is, to put it most simply, because the findings are unacceptable. 'Attitudes which now prevail toward parental absence resemble those once prevalent toward cigarette smoking. For decades Americans ignored the large body of research concerning the adverse effects of cigarette smoke. We had excellent studies for decades before we began to respond to the data. Apparently as a society, we refuse to accept data that demands a radical change in our lifestyle.' 'The Assault on the Family', Family Update, a Bi-Monthly Newsletter of the Australian Family Association. Vol. 9 No. 3 May-June 1993. [206] 'Clubhouse' magazine, a publication of James Dobson's Focus on the Family, recently asked its young readers to share what they liked most about their dad... I was struck by how seldom these children mentioned physical possessions or material things their fathers provided them. Instead it was the simple manifestations of love and commitment that were cited most often, the very things that sometimes fall by the wayside in our increasingly fast-moving world. 'A father should be not only your dad, but your friend, too.' - Samantha, age ten, Southaven, Mississippi 'My dad's most important quality is his willingness to ask forgiveness from me when he is wrong' - Stephanie, age nine, Duluth, Georgia 'A good dad would come to your games... and miss work just for you' - Brook, age twelve, Roswell, Georgia 'The most important quality in my father is that he makes me feel safe' - Erin, age nine, Kansas City, Missouri 'A dad must discipline you when you do something wrong so you won't grow up to be a bad person' - Lisa, age thirteen, Concord, California 'I think a dad should care about his children's grades and their lives. And it helps when your dad will study for a test with you' - Lynn, age ten, Chambersburg, Pennsylvania 'The most important qualities of a father are that he loves and does the best he can for his kids. My dad does that all of the time... well, most of the time. No dad is perfect' - Alicia, age eleven, Wausaw, Wisconsin. All of these touched my heart. But one came at me like a freight train. It was written by ten-year-old Sommer from Fergus Falls, Minnesota: 'The most important thing is that my father loves my mother.' Gary Bauer, Our Journey Home: What Parents Are Doing to Preserve Family Values, Dallas: Word Publishers, 1992, pp.145-146. [287] This morning I asked my nine-year-old son, 'Do you know that I love your mother?' 'Yeah,' he said. 'How do you know?' I persisted. 'You tell her all the time,' he said. 'Well,' I continued, 'what if I lost my voice and couldn't say I loved her. Would she still know I loved her?'