This comment is by Lars Fischer on the post What is The Dad Difference?
Yes, fathers are important. Parents are of dramatic importance to their children. Being enganged, loving, present as a parent will make a huge difference to your children. It is also hugely rewarding, so t’s pure win-win.
What I do not understand is this need to come up with something that is uniquely male, something only a father has to offer. It’s as if the thinking is that fathers are only important if they are different, because they have something mothers – women – do not. But that’s rubbish. Fathers are important because they are the parents of their children. And because every single father is different from the woman who is the mother of his children. They – the two of them, the two unique individuals who have a child or children together – are different and have different things to offer. They have their strengths and weaknesses. They have good days and bad days. Their children need both of them if at all possible.
I am important to my children because I am the person I am. I have great things to offer. Another father may have different things to offer. No problem. My wife and I complement each other and give different things to our children. I’m sure the same thing is true for the couple next door and their children – and I’m sure the mom / dad split is different for them. No problem.
Every father has something great to give. Something exactly as important as the mother. There’s no need to try to invent things that only a father could have done. We – fathers – do not need that to justify ourselves. We’re important because we’re active, involved parents. It really is as simple as that.
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photo: thecatlinator / flickr
My father did something for me that my mother could never do — he taught me how to be a man.
Sure, my mother could pass on second-hand accounts or tell me things she read, but she doesn’t have the lived experience, she couldn’t be an example herself.