Fatherhood & Fathering: Are You a Father?

Everyone has a father but not everyone is a father. We all know there are many known explicit factors to the reason. First, there are more than half of the world populations who are female. Second, there are also quite a few numbers of males who prefer to seek peace in the monk hood. Then we have the biggest proportion of the mankind who are children. Last but not least are those who are not able or unwilling to father any child such as gays, transvestites, infertile, etc.

But those of us who have eventually made it to be a father, how many are in fact fathering. Across time and cultures, men abandon their children much more frequently than do mothers. In the United States today, about 40 percent of all children do not live with their fathers. Before they reach age eighteen, more than half of all U. S. children are likely to spend at least a significant portion of their childhood living apart from their father. How about fathers who live with their children? The same question remains. How many are in fact fathering? One survey estimates that 30 % of men today do not speak to their father¹. Thirty percent have a prickly or hostile and difficult relationship. Another survey suggested that the average time a father spend talking to their children is three minutes a day².

This is quite true to my own self experience. Born in a family of old Chinese culture with strict fatherhood teaching, father was someone I could hardly have an intimate relation with. The old Confucius teaching of (the King wants his servant to die, he must. Father wants his child dead, he must) This is indeed a serious and urgent problem in all cultures and societies in our modern time. It is a big issue probably more important than global warming or energy crisis or Iraq war. Fathering is a basic and foremost duty of mankind. We can certainly reduce substantial social woes and wipe out completely many other undesired world catastrophes if we would only take up the issue seriously.

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1 Steve Biddulph, Manhood, (Sydney: Finch Publishing,1995) 39.
2 Rob Parson, Raising them right, Mike Yorkey, ed. (Texas: Focus on the Family Publishing,1994) 38.

(The writer wrote his Dissertation paper in Fatherhood for his Doctorate degree with the Asia Baptist Graduate Theological Seminary in Hong Kong.)