With Father’s Day coming up, I’ve been thinking about what it is to be a father – and the topic has come up in a discussion with a family member. I realized while discussing fatherhood with that person that I don’t have a clear idea of what a “good father” really is.
What do you think is good fathering? Do you see it primarily as a matter of providing financial support? Or disciplining a child? Or setting a good example of responsible adulthood? Or a combination of these things? Or perhaps something else?
To me a good father loves his child for who he/she is. He doesn’t try to impose his own dreams of sports/business/popularity etc on the child. He parents appropriately along with his wife/partner, sets a good example of his own values. Pretty much what I would say a good mother does.
Do you think there is a lot of difference between a good father and a good mother!
Good fathers, IMO, take an active role in their child’s activities, spend time with them with hobbies, learning about world events, teach them how to be a good person, how to function successfully in the world, and love them unconditionally. This is ditto for either parent.
Works collaboratively/ as a team with the bio mom to raise children that become productive citizens of society, that are kind and independent, have morals and ethics, to be the best they can be. Trouble today is that parents often don’t work as a team, especially when they are not together in a household, and often even when they are. Co-parenting is not for sissies lol.
It is a combination of things, yes. On top of supporting the whole family (the mom’s income is icing on the cake) a good father teaches the kids right from wrong. It is not a teacher’s job to instill honesty, discipline, hard work into young people. It is not the preacher or the coach’s job either although they can help and reinforce what is happening at home. It is the dad’s job.
And if the dad runs out as soon as someone gets pregnant, so that he can play the field, or because he isn’t ready, then he isn’t a father at all. And any person who would then date him should be a bit ashamed of that IMHO. You can tell all you need to know about a man’s character from how he handles decisions like that (run or stay).
I was adopted at birth back in the days when a doctor could set up the whole thing. My natural mom wanted to keep me but whoever got her pregnant ditched her at the last minute so she put me up for adoption. I found out about all of this when I was about 12 and my adopted mom gave me a 4-page hand written letter than my natural mom had mailed her a few months after I was born. She wasn’t supposed to know who adopted her baby but she found out.
My natural dad ran away. He left her to twist in the wind.
I decided that sure as hell would never happen to any kids I bring into this world. So, in my mind, it starts with being a provider and supporting the whole crew and making sure no harm comes to anyone. Then, on top of that, you need to feed their dreams and their souls and get them ready to fly on their own wings when the time comes. There are lots of ways to parent. Some folks use the unconditional love and support route and others take a tough love approach. There are many ways to coach too. It is similar and it is also similar to teaching because you have to compel other people to achieve their goals but can’t do it for them. You have to guide them but at the end of the day the students take the tests not the teachers.
I don’t think there is one right way to do any of it but in my household we seem to have some good cop and bad cop going on. My wife does the good cop role, loves and kisses, rarely questions, always supportive, and guess who gets stuck being the bad cop? A role I didn’t ask for and rarely get thanked for. But, someone has to do it.
Echoing all above but adding that I think it’s especially important for fathers to model what it’s like to be a good partner. Too many young men and women think it’s ok to be mistreated by their partners for whatever reason. Traditionally, women have just been told to accept whatever the man does and that’s why I think it’s especially important for fathers to break that mold.
For me personally, the best thing my father ever did was to help me build good self esteem and never ever let me think for a second that I couldn’t do something because I was a woman. Not even unconsciously which I see too many fathers do, unfortunately.
Actually, I do, but my belief may be based on atypical experiences: I breastfed my babies for longer than average, I didn’t work full-time while raising children, and in my own childhood, I didn’t live in the same household as my father (and despite this, I consider him to have been a very good father). So I may see fathering differently than others do.
I do NOT believe that the father has to be the financially supportive one or the disciplining one or anything else. I think each family needs to do what works for them.
We didn’t do much disciplining in my family and I’ll always be the breadwinner. Mr R can’t discipline for crap and I’d hope we both set an example for how to be a good human.
There shouldn’t be a difference between good fathering and good mothering, but the reality is that the bar is set a helluva lot lower for good fathering vs good mothering.
Mothers are quickly criticized for not actively parenting. Fathers get kudos for simply being around after the ejaculation and not being abusive.
Well, there have to be some differences. If it’s two months before the baby is born and Dad wants to have sushi and wine tonight, he’s free to enjoy them. Mom isn’t.
Or consider the pregnant woman anchor on the Today show who can’t go to the Rio Olympics because of the Zika virus outbreak. If there had been a Today anchor who was an expectant father, he could have gone. The only restriction would have been that he would have had to use a condom when having sex with his pregnant partner until she gave birth.
I think a good father is so critical to showing both sons and daughters how to be a loving husband and partner. A good father supports and encourages their children to achieve their potential, and accepts their limitations. A good father makes their child feel safe.
Being present, being a good listener, being ticklish when your kid tickles you even when you really aren’t, being able to say no with love, being able to say yes with no strings attached, being patient, saying “I love you”, being forgiving, saying “good job with these cookies, they’re delicious!”, saying “you built an awesome robot!” and watching them run the robots, being a good husband to his wife, being a good son to his parents.
I see my husband do/be all those things to his daughters, and I see how it benefits our kids so much-they are growing up into astonishingly amazing young women.
Thank you for your responses. I’m always impressed by the complex and well-thought-out ideas people express on this forum, and this thread is no exception. You’ve got me thinking about aspects of fatherhood that I never considered before.
To me being a good father entails pretty much the same characteristics as being a good mother.
i disagree strongly with the biological essentialism of Marian’s post. My (step) dad adopted me when I was 6 or 7. He IS my dad, full stop, end of subject and the fact that we do not “technically” share DNA is irrelevant to anything. Likewise, I don’t see what giving birth, breastfeeding or SAH have to do with being a good mother - I’m puzzled by that assertion.
"I didn’t live in the same household as my father (and despite this, I consider him to have been a very good father). "
I thought you mentioned that he drank excessively (to the point he developed a “bad personality” when inebriated), and that he belittled your son for not doing “manly” things like sports?
@Marian you are talking about biological restrictions or abilities (breastfeeding, Zika, etc.) which have nothing to do with whether a parent is a good PARENT while actually raising children on an everyday basis. Who CARES if dad eats sushi and pregnant mom can’t? That has nothing to do with parenting. At least, that’s how I look at it.
I echo what several posters have already said. I tell people I won the lottery with my H, and I mean it. He has been, at all times, an EQUAL partner in raising our daughter, and has worked hard, way harder than I had any right to expect, to build a good relationship with my two older kids, even when they made it very difficult for him to WANT to. He works his butt off to be the primary source of income, but hasn’t let his job overshadow his obligations as a parent. He has supported ME, in my efforts to parent. He treats our daughter like she is his whole world, without suffocating her and while allowing her to reach for any goal she has set her sights on. He’s been stern but fair, always.
There’s an old song called “Scarlet Ribbons” in which the father overhears his daughter praying for red hair ribbons, so he runs out and goes from store to store looking for them.He’s gone all night, searching. That describes me H exactly. He HAS run around town trying to find something that D has wished for. He’s not going to get much sleep tonight babysitting the smoker as he makes D’s favorite foods for her party tomorrow. He’ll spend Father’s Day making sure she is where she’s committed to be, and our anniversary attending one of her many performances.
I was reading today that daughters seek out husbands/partners like their fathers. I don’t know how true that is, but our D could certainly see her dad as a great model.
Being a biological mother means that you can fail your child in ways that other parents (male or female) cannot. For example, you could harm your child by eating certain foods, drinking certain beverages, or taking certain medications during pregnancy. If you breastfeed, the need to observe certain restrictions for the sake of your child’s well-being continues. (I knew several nursing mothers who suffered through hay fever season because they could not take allergy medicine and continue to breastfeed.) There is no equivalent for fathers or for adoptive or stepmothers.
I think that prolonged breastfeeding and being a stay-at-home mom affected my perceptions of what mothers and fathers should do because they put my husband and me in different roles in the family. In families where a baby is formula fed or where both parents work full-time, the roles of the parents may be more similar.
@Pizzagirl, you’re right that I have criticized some things my father did. But he paid his child support on time, every time, and he stayed involved in his children’s lives even while not living with them. He also consented to a clause in the divorce agreement that obligated him to pay 50% of his kids’ college expenses, and he lived up to that obligation. These are things that many noncustodial parents don’t do. I give him a lot of credit for doing them, even though he did other things that I disagree with.
“Being a biological mother means that you can fail your child in ways that other parents (male or female) cannot. For example, you could harm your child by eating certain foods, drinking certain beverages, or taking certain medications during pregnancy. If you breastfeed, the need to observe certain restrictions for the sake of your child’s well-being continues. (I knew several nursing mothers who suffered through hay fever season because they could not take allergy medicine and continue to breastfeed.) There is no equivalent for fathers or for adoptive or stepmothers.”
Sure there is. You’re being entirely too literal. The mother who drinks excessively throughout her pregnancy is not being a good parent because she is endangering her child’s health and safety, but neither is the father who doesn’t buckle the child into the car seat. Just because they cause harm by different “mechanisms” isn’t the point. I think we can all agree on the trivial “causing deliberate harm to your child or putting him in harm’s way is not being a good parent.”
I also disagree with some of your specifics about “failing” a child. Yeah, we all agree, you shouldn’t be knocking down the Jack Daniels all through your pregnancy; got it. But your friends who chose to forego allergy medications to stick with nursing – that’s their personal choice, not evidence of superior motherhood. To my way of thinking, any nursing mother who stops nursing because she needs to take medication (whether it’s relatively trivial like hay fever or something more serious, like depression / anxiety) hasn’t even remotely “failed” her child.
It seems like you’ve elevated extended breastfeeding into a marker of good motherhood, which is unfortunate on SO many levels, and the kind of thing you expect from brand new mommies in hormonal fogs who are super-sensitive to doing everything right, not what you expect from mothers of twenty-somethings who should have developed a little perspective over time as to what matters and what doesn’t.
