The Value of a Father
Father’s Day is coming up, and it’s a great time to reevaluate our fathers’ roles in our lives, and the value that only they can bring to our culture.
Every Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in churches, we hear sermons emphasizing the role, the responsibility, and the appreciation for our mothers and fathers. These are good messages that we need to hear even more than once a year. But, these are sometimes the most painful Sunday sermons for many people because of the lack of fathers (or mothers) and for those who had parents who just couldn’t figure out how to be there for them. One of the most significant crises in our nation, in our culture currently, is the breakdown of the family and the absence of fathers in the majority of our families today. Over 50% of children in America are born to single mothers, and many do not ever form relationships with their natural born fathers as a result.
I am the Director of a Crisis Pregnancy Center, and we don’t see many of the fathers/boyfriends coming in for counseling or standing by their girlfriends who are pregnant. It’s lonely, scary, and a tough situation for most of these women. They courageously do what is best in having the baby and allowing it to LIVE, but it is far from an ideal situation. The family unit truly is at risk in America, and although women step up to the role of Head of Household and take the responsibility to be breadwinner and mom and everything in between, we all know this is not the BEST we can do. It’s clear that no baby comes into this world as the result of ONE person, but always TWO: a man and a woman/a boy and a girl. So, it is automatically built in to the “science” of family to need both father and mother.
We also see that the highest number of letters mailed out from prisons are on Mother’s Day…and the number of letters mailed out on Father’s Day are by comparison very few. This certainly is not because there are more mothers that represent the prison inmates, but because the inmates by and large do not know or have any relationship with their fathers. All of these scenarios and statistics beg the question of the tremendous value a father brings to the family, to an individual as they grow during childhood, a person’s sense of value of themselves and others around them, and their place in society as played out in the decisions they make in life. As teen pregnancy has risen in our society over the past several decades, so has the incidence of childhood trauma, violence, rebellion, lack of respect for authority, hopelessness, depression, and suicide.
By contrast, we also look at symbols of prosperity, success, peace, freedom, community service, courage and a thriving society: God the Father (who “disciplines His sons, the ones whom He loves”), our Founding Fathers like George Washington who led us to freedom, Father Abraham of our Judeo-Christian roots, and Robert the Bruce (and Sir William Wallace) in the movie Braveheart. Wallace says to Robert, in one of the toughest times in Scottish history, “If you would just lead them (to freedom), they’d follow you…and so would I.” History and our current society all tell us that if men will lead, especially as fathers, the rest will follow. How we value and need the fathers to retain their leadership roles in the family.
It is true that women have stepped up to take the demands and the stresses of the family, in order to hold it together. But, some forces (Hollywood, the media, voices of other societies and ideologies) have invaded our culture and have demoralized men and pushed them aside. Therefore, men have walked away from their natural roles as protector, provider, leader, and have left it up to the mothers alone. Our society is craving that men would take courage and return to their natural roles and stand up for their families, their wives and their children. And, contrary to what we are “told”, this doesn’t make the women weaker or diminish them in any way; it actually makes them stronger, freeing them to reach their potential and be all they can be. When men take their proper roles in families, the mothers and the children thrive as well!
My name is Gina Johnsen. I am running for State Representative. And my campaign slogan is “Michigan Families First”. All the woes and the accolades of a society start and end with the family. The family is the most important unit for any society, across the globe. My goal is to encourage, stand up for, and do what is necessary to strengthen the family – the fathers, the mothers, the children! Will you help me do that for the families in Michigan? Please vote for me August 2nd, and help me regain respect for the family, recognizing the very important role of the father, and encouraging mom, dad, grandparents and children to again be the healthiest, most prosperous they can be.