A good spouse and father, faithful and devoted, is not some quaint artifact of the past.
A good spouse and father, faithful and devoted, is not some quaint artifact of the past.
A s our national debates over the role of women, motherhood, and children continue to stir controversy, one topic has been conspicuously absent: the role of fathers. Far too often, as the recent furor over remarks by Harrison Butker at a small Catholic college-commencement ceremony attests, women as wives and mothers are almost always framed in isolation, with the presumption that women who embrace the time-honored vocation of marriage, and having a child, are on their own.
Today, fatherhood, once esteemed as a pillar of a flourishing American society, is either ignored or even denigrated as part of an oppressive patriarchy that burdens women. From Hollywood to our universities, men as fathers have instead become pariahs, shameful fixtures of an outdated way of life that we’ve moved beyond. There’s no avoiding that a significant contributor to this shift in habits and attitudes has been the hyper-individualism of a progressive ideology that reduces happiness to conceptions of self-expression and uninhibited lifestyle choices. Yet a related movement has also emerged on the right, with emancipated men glorified for their selfish pursuit of material wealth, cars, jewelry and fashion, body-builder physiques, and women (or many women) as sexual trophies. Is there a better way?
I’ve been forced to reflect on this challenge in recent days as my own father passed away earlier this month, and was buried on Friday. His life and legacy were marked by an idea of fatherhood that seems sadly forgotten. Fatherhood, for him, was not rooted in power, authoritarianism, or self-aggrandizement. His embrace of fatherhood assumed that he was both a lifelong companion and co-partner with my mother in the adventure of raising a family. He understood that male leadership, especially within a marriage or family, requires service, sacrifice, humility, and love. When he heard the epistle from scripture read during Mass at his Catholic parish about wives being submissive to their husbands, he paid equal attention to what the apostle said next. St. Paul admonishes husbands to love their wives, as Christ loved the church: that is, to be willing to lay down your life for her.
Despite our best efforts to ignore or circumvent the laws of biology, motherhood doesn’t happen without fatherhood. Men are not only necessary, but also essential to the nurturing and raising of children. The social science has long been settled. Children raised in a home with both a mother and father are privileged. And while economic and social conditions have obviously evolved, the idea of men as fathers who are protectors and providers need not be reduced to a power play. Indeed, recovering the idea of men and women as complementary, mutual cooperators in a lifelong thrilling partnership in marriage, and the raising of raising children, is not only attainable; it’s how most of human civilization has survived and thrived.
The recovery of authentic fatherhood likewise need not be reduced to caricatures from the past, as if our only choices are some Mad Men throwback or abandoning fatherhood altogether. Atomized and emancipated men and women, relieved of all responsibilities or duties toward each other, breed both animosity and chaos. Given the choices on offer, it’s no wonder, then, that many women today find the idea of marriage and motherhood abhorrent, or why both marriage and birthrates are plummeting, or why abortion has become such a dominant issue in the current election cycle. The social experiments of the past 60 years have failed miserably. Their end result is clear: Nobody wins, and nobody is happy. Perhaps it’s time to revisit the importance of fatherhood.
There is no perfect person or perfect society. Men and women both fail and struggle. But they are also each born with unique gifts that no machine or software can replicate. And it’s precisely in that mutual gift of self to each other that the drama of our lives becomes a source of both sadness and immeasurable joy. Love is a high calling that rewards those who choose to live it.
Harrison Butker was right. Many women likely desire and will find fulfillment in getting married and having children. But what Butker didn’t say was that women who embrace this vocation choose to do so with the expectation that good men will step up as husbands and fathers and join them in the noble task. A good spouse and father, faithful and devoted, is not some quaint artifact of the past. A father is an exemplar, a teacher, a hero, and a friend. I was blessed to have such a dad.