While I am at odds with certain policy positions of the President, especially those relating to the life issues, I was really pleased to see the talk that he gave on fatherhood last weekend. We need more of this type of discourse.

For a long time, women, e.g. various strands of feminism, claimed that they got no recognition for their work in the home/family. As a result, many women entered the workplace to gain the recognition they desired. But it’s debatable that that recognition did anything to draw attention to their roles as mothers. Nevertheless, there continues to be a great deal of focus on women to the extent that it’s often to the exclusion of men. If you think mothers are unrecognized, fathers are even more neglected. In fact, they’ve come to be considered as sort of optional or disposable; witness the growing number of single moms.

The President’s speech here could be a step to correcting that neglect. Some highlights:

And I say this as someone who grew up without a father in my own life. I had a heroic mom and wonderful grandparents who helped raise me and my sister, and it’s because of them that I’m able to stand here today. But despite all their extraordinary love and attention, that doesn’t mean that I didn’t feel my father’s absence. That’s something that leaves a hole in a child’s heart that a government can’t fill.

Our government can build the best schools with the best teachers on Earth, but we still need fathers to ensure that the kids are coming home and doing their homework, and having a book instead of the TV remote every once in a while. Government can put more cops on the streets, but only fathers can make sure that those kids aren’t on the streets in the first place. Government can create good jobs, but we need fathers to train for these jobs and hold down these jobs and provide for their families.

If we want our children to succeed in life, we need fathers to step up. We need fathers to understand that their work doesn’t end with conception — that what truly makes a man a father is the ability to raise a child and invest in that child.

We need fathers to be involved in their kids’ lives not just when it’s easy — not just during the afternoons in the park or at the zoo, when it’s all fun and games — but when it’s hard, when young people are struggling, and there aren’t any quick fixes or easy answers, and that’s when young people need compassion and patience, as well as a little bit of tough love.

Now, this is a challenge even in good times. And it can be especially tough during times like these, when parents have a lot on their minds — they’re worrying about keeping their jobs, or keeping their homes or their health care, paying their bills, trying to give their children the same opportunities that they had. And so it’s understandable that parents get concerned, some fathers who feel they can’t support their families, get distracted. And even those who are more fortunate may be physically present, but emotionally absent.
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Let’s be clear: Just because your own father wasn’t there for you, that’s not an excuse for you to be absent also — it’s all the more reason for you to be present. There’s no rule that says that you have to repeat your father’s mistakes. Just the opposite — you have an obligation to break the cycle and to learn from those mistakes, and to rise up where your own fathers fell short and to do better than they did with your own children.

Last Sunday’s Gospel reading, Mark 4, 35-41 also got me thinking about fatherhood and motherhood:

On that day, as evening drew on, Jesus said to his disciples:
“Let us cross to the other side.”
Leaving the crowd, they took Jesus with them in the boat just as he was.
And other boats were with him.
A violent squall came up and waves were breaking over the boat,
so that it was already filling up.
Jesus was in the stern, asleep on a cushion.
They woke him and said to him,”Teacher, do you not care that we are perishing?”
He woke up,
rebuked the wind, and said to the sea, “Quiet! Be still!”
The wind ceased and there was great calm.
Then he asked them, “Why are you terrified?
Do you not yet have faith?”
They were filled with great awe and said to one another,
“Who then is this whom even wind and sea obey?”

It seems to me that the child’s experience of both parents helps to shape her experience of God. For example, in families where the father is absent or otherwise out of the picture, the children often have a difficult time understanding God as Father. After all, if we don’t know it on a natural level, how can we know it on a supernatural level?

Children, especially small children, often get upset and frightened by things that they don’t understand or are beyond their control. The above Gospel passage reminded me of how children can be frightened by a storm and, in turn, run to their parents bed for comfort. The parents comfort the child, saying that there’s nothing to worry about, that everything is ok. And the child relaxes and settles in for the rest of the night (or until a parent gently restores the child to its proper bed). But the fear is gone and everything seems all right. Even if the storm hasn’t passed, there’s something about being with the parents that makes seem as if no harm can come.

Which got me wondering if this isn’t another example of how parents teach their children about God. Sure, the parents don’t control the “wind and the sea”, but it can certainly seem that way to a small child looking for comfort in the middle of a night storm. And that experience could be preparing the child for that lesson that we spend our whole life learning: that there is one ultimate source of calm and refuge. Parents can and should be the first to teach this lesson even by their very presence.