Nurturing

Friends,

The traditional societal role for men has often been defined by the "three p’s:” to protect, provide and procreate. As these role definitions have recently decreased in relevance, I am pleased we increasingly are recognizing and honoring an ascendant fourth primary societal role for men: to nurture. I am very encouraged that our culture has increasingly defined and honored what it means to be a nurturing male. And on this Father’s Day weekend, I am especially thinking about how important it is to be nurturing fathers to our children. 

I am encouraged to see the fathers in my own family, and many fathers elsewhere, taking increased responsibility for the tending and care of children. I know there have always been devoted fathers who assumed major parental responsibility, but for the past several generations and before that role was filled primarily by the mothers or other women. For various reasons of increased gender parity, among others, men now assume responsibility for meal preparation and other household responsibilities, but most importantly they have assumed a more central role in the tending and care of children. I also must quickly note that mothers likely still assume that primary role, but given the remarkable shift in a relatively short time, the cultural adaptation of the more central role of men in the daily support of the home and child rearing deserves particular note, and I want to acknowledge this crucially important shift now as we celebrate Father’s Day this weekend.

Although I seem to have done a good amount of changing diapers and feeding the kids in the 1970s, my own three sons now play such an increased equal role in the care of their children. They not only enjoy playing with the children and fully engaging in their lives, I sense a whole deeper level of intimacy as they share the care for a child's illnesses and emotional needs in addition to the daily routines. And because much of this parenting role is somewhat new for men, given this was only a partial role in recent past generations, many fathers must often create anew the models for fathering that may not have been available for them. They have had to adapt to new parental skills and become informed about their children’s developmental stages and social and cognitive needs as they achieve a much deeper familiarity with their children. I am so impressed and encouraged by this new generation of fathers.

Over the years I have been aware, in comparison, how men in non-white cultures more casually relate to children and seem to be so much more at ease with them. I love to see these men in extended family gatherings in restaurants, for example, so warmly and tenderly caring for the children. I don’t want to generalize this too far, but the good news is that as our culture’s fathers now become more and more familiar with their children - and the children become more familiar with them - my perception of cultural differences will become less apparent - and I think this is very encouraging.

So here’s to dads and granddads and uncles  - biological, step, adopted or surrogate - and to all those male teachers, mentors and medical care givers, among many others, who provide a fatherly nurturing role in various children’s lives. I envision all those children, in turn, will benefit from the love and care afforded them, and then they, too, can be better prepared to be nurturing fathers for the future children in their lives. Surely offering -- especially young boys --nonviolent alternative fathering role models to the hyper-competitive, often violent role models that surround them, is a very positive means of creating a more peaceful and nurturing world.

I must close with a final note that I not only want to honor the present young fathers as noted above, I also want to offer profound gratitude to all the fathers, grandfathers and other supportive father figures who accompanied and sacrificed for my generation through these amazing years of our own maturing into adulthood and becoming fathers ourselves. We all need to take a moment to be grateful for how much they gave us. But, if necessary, we also need to accept, whether or not those fathers adequately met our needs, they likely were doing the best they could toward us, and we need to be thankful for all the fathering support we received.

Peace,
Tom