Brian’s Story
I was just twelve when my Boy Scout troop planned a father-son campout. I was thrilled and could hardly wait to rush home and give my father all the information. I wanted so much to show him all I’d learned in scouting, and I was so proud when he said he’d go with me.
The Friday of the campout finally came, and I had all my gear out on the porch, ready to stuff it in his car the moment he arrived. We were to meet at the local school at 5 p.m. car pool to the campground.
But Dad didn’t get home from work until 7 p.m. as frantic, but he explained how things had gone wrong at work and told me not to worry. We could still get up first thing in the morning and join the others. After all, we had a map. I was disappointed, of course, but decided to just make the best of it.
First thing in the morning, I was up and had everything in his car while it was still getting light, all ready for us to catch up with my friends and their fathers at the campground. He had said we’d leave around 7 a.m., and I was ready a half hour before that. But he never came out of his room until 9 a.m.
When he saw me standing out front with the camping gear, he finally explained that he had a bad back and couldn’t sleep on the ground. He hoped I’d understand and that I’d be a “big boy” about it … but could I please get my things out of his car, because he had several commitments he had to keep.
Just about the hardest thing I’ve ever done was to go to the car and take out my sleeping bag, cooking stove, pup tent, and supplies. And then, while I was putting my stuff away in the storage shed and he thought I couldn’t see, I watched my father carry his golf clubs out and throw them in his trunk and drive away to keep his “commitment.”
That’s when I realized my dad never meant to go with me to the campout. I didn’t matter to him, but his golfing buddies did.
Fatherless Families
In 1960, the total number of children living in fatherless families was fewer than eight million. Today, that total has risen to nearly twenty-four million. Nearly four out of ten children in America are being raised in homes without their fathers and soon it may be six out of ten. How did this happen? Why are so many of our nation’s children growing up without a full-time father? It is because our culture has accepted the idea that fathers are superfluous—in other words, they are not necessary in the “modern” family. Supposedly, their contributions to the well-being of children can easily be performed by the state, which disburses welfare checks, subsidizes midnight basketball leagues, and establishes child-care facilities.
Ideas, of course, have consequences. And the consequences of this idea have been as profound as they have been disastrous. Almost 75 percent of American children living in fatherless households will experience poverty before the age of eleven, compared to only 20 percent of those raised by two parents. Children living in homes where fathers are absent are far more likely to be expelled from or drop out of school, develop emotional or behavioral problems, commit suicide, and fall victim to child abuse or neglect. The males are also far more likely to become violent criminals. As matter of act, men who grew up without dads currently represent 70 percent of the prison population serving long-term sentences.
Seven Secrets of Effective Fathers
Effective Fathers are:
- Committed to their children.
- Know their children.
- Are consistent in their attitudes and behavior.
- Protect and Provide for their children.
- Love their children’s mother.
- Are active listeners to their children.
- Spiritually equip their children.
Resources
- John R. W. Stott, The Preacher’s Portrait, Some New Testament Word Studies, (Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publ. Co., 1961), pp. 80ff
What Is a Father?
- A father is a thing that is forced to endure childbirth without anesthetic. A father is a thing that growls when he feels good...and laughs very loud when he is scared half to death.
- A father never feels entirely worthy of the worship in a child’s eyes. He is never quite the hero his daughter thinks he is...never quite the man his son believes him to be...and this worries him, sometimes. So he works too hard to try to smooth the rough places in the road for those of his own who follow him.
- A father is a thing that gets upset when the first grades in school are not as good as he thinks they should be. He scolds his son...though he knows it is the teacher’s fault.
- Fathers grow old faster than people. Because they, in wartime, have to stand at the airports and wave good-bye to the uniformed son that flies away to face the unknown. And while mothers can cry where it shows, fathers have to be brave and beam outside...while quietly dying inside.
- Fathers have very stout hearts; so they have to be broken sometimes or no one would know what’s inside. Fathers are what give daughters away to other men who are not nearly good enough...so they can have grandchildren that are smarter than anybody’s.
- Fathers fight dragons...almost daily. They hurry away from the breakfast table...off to the arena which is sometimes called an office or a workshop. There, with callused, practiced hands, they tackle the dragon with three heads: weariness, work, and monotony. They never quite win the fight, but they never give up. Knights in shining armor—fathers in shiny trousers: there is little difference, as they march away to each new workday.
- And when a father who knows the Lord dies, I have an idea that after a good rest he will not be happy unless there is work to do. He will not just sit on a cloud and wait for the girl he has loved and the children she bore. He will be busy there, too—repairing the stairs...oiling the gates, improving the streets...smoothing the way.
Most Frightened Man in America
Thomas J. Watson, Sr., died six weeks after naming his son as the new head of IBM, the company the elder Watson had led for more than forty years. The junior Watson said his promotion made him “the most frightened man in America.” But he took the helm and led IBM into the computer era and ten-fold corporate growth. His success was made possible, he said later, by his dad’s confidence in and acceptance of him during his college years, when he was more interested in flying airplanes than in studying or applying himself.
Dad is Destiny
A cover article in the February 27 issue of U. S. News & World Report concluded that: Dad is destiny. More than any other factor, a father’s presence in the family will determine a child’s success and happiness.” The article noted that nearly two out of every five children in America do not live with their fathers.
Quotes
- “More than virtually any other factor, a biological father’s presence in the family will determine a child’s success and happiness.”—U. S. News and World Report
- “Committed fatherhood would do more to restore a normal childhood to every child, and dramatically reduce our nation’s most costly social problems, than all of the pending legislation in America combined.”—National Fatherhood Initiative
- “The plague of fatherlessness is a painful inheritance of poverty and illness that is passed down from one generation to the next.”—University of Texas Sociologists
- “The most urgent domestic challenge facing the United States at the close of the 20th century is the re-creation of fatherhood as a social role for men.”—David Blankenhorn, Institute for American Values.
- “Some 46% of families with children headed by single mothers live below the poverty line, compared to 8% of those with two parents...Studies show that only 43% of state prisons inmates grew up with both parents and that a missing father is a better predictor of criminal activity than race or poverty...Social scientists have made similar links between a father’s absence and his child’s likelihood of being a dropout, jobless, a drug addict, a suicide victim, mentally ill, and a target of child abuse.”—U. S. News & World Report
- “A good father does these basic things: provides for his family, protects his family, and gives spiritual and moral guidance.”—David Blankenhorn
Talking to Dad
Research shows that mothers are far more likely than fathers to discuss problems and have close personal talks with their teenage children. As a result, teenage boys and girls both say they feel freer to go to their mothers than their fathers to talk openly and discuss problems. In fact, when teenagers responded to the statement: “This person and I always talk openly to each other,” out of four choices (father, mother, close male friend, or close female friend), only 4% of sons and 1% of daughters chose “father.” Teens tell me that they want desperately to be able to talk with their dads, but they’ll stop trying if they think they aren’t being heard.
Mike Ditka
After interviewing her friends the Ditkas, Jeannie Morris said this (as reported in Ditka: Monster of the Midway):
The Ditka marriage [to Marge], like many others of that time, was dysfunctional from the start. I don’t think it was ever any good. Mike and Marge, I mean, you can put it in a nutshell. Mike and Marge never got along...You know, I think the deal was that when they got married, they got married with the idea of being married forever. I mean, there was nobody else he wanted to marry and he thought he was supposed to get married. Both are very strong willed and they’re very much alike, and Marge tried to go by the rules for a long, long time...The rules being he’s the boss and we do everything his way, and if he doesn’t feel like being here for whatever period of time he doesn’t have to be.
Megan Ditka, his daughter, is twenty-nine now and reported to the author of Ditka: Monster of the Midway:
I have very few recollections of my father. My mom basically raised us by herself. I love my mom a lot. She’s a real brave woman. I couldn’t ask for anybody better. My dad was never really around a lot. And even when he was, he wasn’t. We were always pretty much afraid of my dad. My dad is just like his dad. You didn’t have conversations with him. He’s a little intimidating when you’re a kid...I don’t think he knows how to love.”
I don’t know the private Mike Ditka. But it’s clear that his drive to succeed, his focus, and his strong emotions impacted his family and cost him dearly.