Fatherhood is a magnificent and sacred part of our culture; a part of life to be treasured. When a father is visible and approachable, he is the apple of his child's eye.
Day-care providers see this all the time. Daddy is the larger-than-life man a child flies into the arms of at the end of a child-care day. Active fathers become the heroes of their child's dreamscapes and the cause of their child's wonder and amazement - of the world and more importantly, of the self.Fathers who offer children their very personal and masculine perspective offer them a world of insights into human nature they can't get any place else. In short, good fathers do more than provide goods and services to their children.
Providers frequently laugh at dads who may not know his child's shoe size or realize his child is wearing stripes and plaid and print all at once or understand that the hair he so carefully fashioned has that "extra something" just beneath the smooth top hairs and shouldn't. But it never means he's any less a father.
A father's role in a family is absolutely essential because it's so other than a mother's role. And children love their fathers with a different kind of affection than they lavish on mom; that's the natural scheme of things. A father's affection is challenging a kind of love children really need and want.
At its best, a father's presence in the life of his child is a mutual delight. He's the one kids will pick to swim with, to take that first roller coaster ride with and who gets the first classroom field trip invitation.
Fathers are the parent children want praise from first. While mom is busy with nearly everything in a child's life, dad often "desires the better portion" of the child, and that's a positive for the child.
Sadly, however, the whole concept of what it means to be a father is taking a real emotional beating these days. TV portrays fathers as ineffective jerks. Ridiculed by a popular need to destroy the traditional masculine role in favor of something softer, more passive and more feminine, fatherhood seems to be losing its strength.
At the same time, competition between the sexes for the child's favor is wreaking havoc. Men try to achieve motherhood while mothers try to rewrite fatherhood. The only members of the family who get it right seem to be the children as their families begin to splinter into pieces.
But splintered family or not, no matter what the status quo, children will gratefully receive any offerings of their father's time, talent and treasure because he belongs to them; he is theirs.