Mothers and Fathers

In my household, we try to not to go to church on Mother's Day or Father's Day. Mike and I both hate church on our particular day. For me, it irritates me for some stranger to hand me a flower and wish me a Happy Mother's Day. I know I have heard other moms say the same thing. Then this wonderful sermon follows extolling the great virtues of mother's in general. Then 6 weeks later, Father's Day rolls around and Mike gets verbal abuse from the pulpit about how men are shirking their responsibilities. So we don't go, if we can avoid it.

This has been going on for years and always feels wrong to me. So I am assuming that is why my oldest daughter sent me an article about this. It was from Kritik which I guess is an online magazine. It is also written by a man who sees the same trend about fathers getting the shaft. Mother's Day wracks up 14 billion dollars in gifts each year and Father's day only 8 billion. The author was pondering why this happens so he asked some friends and this was their conclusion.


I was sitting around talking with a number of friends of various ages and familial circumstances, and since Mothers’ Day was just around the corner, I proffered up my typical inquiry. For once, I finally got an insightful response:
I was told that a mother exists in continual doubt of her efforts. Even if she is the most excellent of moms, laboring day in and day out to be the best mother that she can be, she is always second-guessing her life’s work. The characteristic mindset for a woman is to wonder if she is doing enough, whether she should be doing more, or whether she should be doing something different. She needs—and deserves—encouragement and affirmation more than anything else.
The father, on the other hand, has an entirely different mentality. Most men are pretty darn secure, and are thus fairly oblivious to what anybody else may think of them. If the man is a poor or mediocre father, he probably doesn’t know it and certainly doesn’t act like it. Men seem to come standard with an ingrained, self-affirming mechanism. It could be obvious to the whole world that a certain guy is stupid, inconsiderate and obnoxious, but he himself will probably still be pretty confident of his status as a model human.


I totally disagree. I think men are just as insecure about parenting as females. I believe men crave respect and honor way more than women. Especially from their families. I don't think that men are so confident that they swagger around the room clueless about who they are tromping all over. I think the swagger you sometimes see comes from a self-protective wall that buries the hurt of the difficulties of life. And that includes parenting, which is a challenging job, at best.

My own father does a lot of swaggering (Is that a word?) but I know he loves his family and we are very important to him. From what I know about his dad, he was a crappy role model. My dad has done many things better than his dad did. I think he has gotten so good at pretending that he doesn't care what anybody thinks, it is hard to separate that from his true self. I have seen this mask fall off a few times. I wish I could see more of him like this. Maybe someday!