In many Christian denominations worldwide, today is celebrated as Father’s Day. Fatherhood is considered a profound phenomenon that calls for a great measure of accountability on those who knowingly assume the task or have it foisted upon them. In all cases, it is a function, a vocation, not simply a title or a name. A father is the progenitor, the source of identity, and the one who enables the children to have a definite sense of self. He is the primary provider, the sustainer, the protector, the guardian, the teacher, and the role model of those who call him father.
He is the emotional anchor and the wellspring of stability for the children, the wife, and others who live with them. The father inspires the children, nurturing their dreams and aspirations and encouraging them to reach for the stars and pursue their passions. He instils confidence and builds self-esteem, paving the way for his children’s success.
In all cultures, fatherhood is characterised by love, tenderness, discipline, decisiveness, courage and sacrifice. Ideally, a father possesses an innate instinct to prioritise the safety and well-being of their family members over their own, ensuring that the wife and the children are shielded from the vagaries of life. With their effort to provide for the family, fathers teach their children the value of hard work, responsibility, diligence, integrity and perseverance and, in this way, equip the children with the required tools to navigate life’s inevitable challenges and disruptive circumstances.
In our view, the fatherhood vocation is an invitation to live out family life and the human potential for responsibility, commitment, deferred gratification, courage, and sacrificial (selfless) love.
Yet, in our opinion, the number one crisis in society appears to be the absence of a role model for fatherhood. Many young people today are “fatherless,” not because they have no male parent alive, but because their male parent has either been completely absent from their lives, or they have been a source of scandal and trauma. They are remembered only with pain, regret, and resentment.
Thus, often lacking models of positive masculinity to emulate in their growing years, many young men are today struggling with a variety of character defects that amount to negative masculinity, including the psycho-emotional abuse of their wives, actual physical battering, and remorseless infidelity. Many young men have little or no sense of commitment to their families or responsibility for the children they have brought into the world.
Under this circumstance, many children have had their innocent minds defiled and their delicate sensibilities assaulted as they watched their fathers harass and molest their wives. On the one hand, many young men struggle with what they saw in their formative years, and sometimes, they end up exhibiting the same traits of negative masculinity in their own marital relationships.
Many young women, on the other, have grown up with deep-seated resentment and hateful feelings against the male species in general on account of what they saw as gross injustices and inequities or glaring imbalances in power relations between their fathers and their mothers.
The global celebration of Father’s Day this year, in the opinion of this newspaper, is a most fitting occasion to remind the men – the fathers, the would-be fathers and the father figures in our society, to spare a moment to reflect on the enormous privilege and the sacred responsibility that come with fatherhood and to work in concert with other individuals and groups, towards overcoming the anomaly of toxic masculinity that contradicts all the lofty ideals of fatherhood.
Far from being a bully, the husband who often doubles as father, is ideally “one who cultivates, nourishes, tills, and tends” the wife and the children. The male headship of families in our society is not something to be achieved through domination and coercion but through a high sense of responsibility, commitment, and sacrifice.
Whereas the teachings and live examples of Jesus Christ are clear on the equal dignity of men and women and the sanctity and inviolability of all persons created in the image and likeness of God, a few texts of the Judeo-Christian Scriptures have sometimes in the past been given such mischievous and self-serving interpretations as to justify some categories of gender-based violence.
Yet, a closer examination of such Scriptural texts will show that such interpretations have no place in the lives and communities of true followers of Jesus Christ. No category of spousal abuse or gender-based violence can be even remotely associated with followers of Christ.
The vocation of the Christian husband and father is one of self-sacrifice. He constantly prioritises the safety and security, as well as the welfare and well-being of his wife and children, over and above his own comfort and well-being.
Recognising that many young men may not have had the good fortune of being raised or mentored by exemplary fatherhood role models, brings to the fore, perhaps, the necessity of individuals and organisations who are sufficiently invested in the promotion of positive masculinity for the wholesome development of the society, to begin to take on the project of healing of youths of their traumatic experiences with toxic masculinity while growing up, and forming the boys, particularly in the values and virtues of the ideal father and husband.
