A Father's Influence

A father's influence on his children lasts an entire lifetime, and I write this article knowing full well the impacts and influence my own Father had on me and thinking what influence I will have on my own children. A father influences everything from a model of behavior to certain likes and dislikes, and though every single child has a unique personality, what his or her father likes and dislikes has influence on the child's own tendencies.

Typical examples include people who have bigotry, ignorance or anger toward types of people whether it is race, gender or sexual preference, in many ways their children will either adapt these point of views to coincide with the father, or they will take a stand and polar opposite if their own beliefs are hardly opposed. Father's influence how their children look for partners in life by girls looking to naturally find men either with similar traits as their father (if they are good men) or not wanting anything like their father (if they had an abusive or overly strict one). Often though children grow up and repeat the patterns and chose people who have similar personalities, even if it was something they would have preferred not to, or said they wouldn't.

A father's influence can make the difference between a child having a healthy self esteem and one who is crushed with a low self esteem, having a parent who is optimistic, positive and supportive can help your child thrive in life, and having a father who is critical, pessimistic and negative can cause a child to become introverted, reclusive and depressed. I speak from my own experience about this having had my own issues dealing with my own father.

Bottom line:

A Father has a huge influence in their child's life and as in the movie Spiderman "With Great Power, Comes Great Responsibility" it is up to us as fathers to model the behavior we want our children to emulate when they grow up. As father's we set the standard on who we want our sons to be, and who we want our daughters to look for in husbands in the future. When we make mistakes as fathers we should always acknowledge them and help keep our kids informed that we are all human beings and part of being human is to make mistakes and learn from those mistakes.

Don't take being a father lightly, it is a huge responsibility.