Commentary: Every year on a Sunday in June, Americans celebrate Father’s Day.
Years ago, the universal existential life position of motherhood began to be officially celebrated in America. Like many things in our nation, enterprising retailers were looking for ways to stimulate business activity and the need to buy mother flowers or candy or something else looked quite appealing as an untapped economic opportunity. Others just wanted to thank their life-giver for the gift of life and nurture.
Once Mothers had their day of official recognition, regular folks and those same enterprising business owners logically thought that Fathers also deserved such official recognition.
It might be noted here that more than a few children over the years noticed that Mothers and Fathers had been given a special day but kid’s didn’t have one. When asked about this obvious oversight, many parents would crack a smile and tell the young inquiring mind that Every Day is Children’s Day. That usually put a quick and confusing end to that discussion.
Now, back to fathers. As for our grandfather’s generation and those that came before, men pretty much knew what they were supposed to do as fathers. Those were still largely the days of the traditional nuclear family of a man and woman and children forming a family unit. The man was usually the sole bread-winner in those years, so the man left the home early in the morning and returned tired late at night after toiling away unseen outside the homestead in the in-between hours. Think Ward Cleaver of Leave It to Beaver.
Then, modern American society began to change. Increasingly challenging economic pressures and a desire to expand the role and opportunities for women in American life led both parents to work outside the home for many families. Men began to see their role in both their home and professional lives changing. We are now some fifty years into that development and many men are still trying to find their way in the new work and home landscape. Instead of knowing what was expected of them, men now had to question how they would properly fit in and even whether they should radically change their relationship to working outside the home. Another big trend in society was that the traditional nuclear family was not always the default position for family formations in America. New kinds of families were growing in number.
The role of fathers today continues to evolve. And so are the roles of all our other family and societal ways of being. We are all navigating our way to learn who we are and what we should be like in our fast arriving world of tomorrow.
So, what do you give dad on Father’s Day in the 21st Century? He doesn’t need a new cell phone. He doesn’t need a new pickup truck. He doesn’t need to get things that won’t be good for his next doctor-wellness-visit. Flowers are still mostly a non-starter. What father’s really need more than ever is an acknowledgment that they are human beings like all humans. Father’s just need the gift of being appreciated, of being recognized, of knowing that they matter to someone - just like every other human being on the planet wants and needs.
For us humans, some of our place in the world is determined before we are born and most of it we find on our individual path along the way. But who and what we are inside really never changes that much. Give us some daily bread, some useful work, a good amount of play time, and some folks around us who show us they care that we exist.
That’s the gift of Fathers and Father's Day.