Professional Documents
Culture Documents
Changing Role of The Father
Changing Role of The Father
Changing Role of The Father
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A few years ago, just before the United States entered World War II,
a very young naval officer asked permission of his superior officer to
petition for an emergency leave because, as he said, "My wife is going
to have a baby. " My dear young man," his senior officer is reported
to have replied, "your presence at home was necessary for the laying
of the keel, but it is not necessary for the launching of the ship. " We
are not told the ultimate resolution of the story--whether the expectant
father applied for his leave or not, but the little episode bears out the
point I wish to make that in the recent past the role of the father, in all
too many cases, has been 41most a nominal one, save in the biological
I do not think that it is daring to say that father lost much of his function and even prestige when the family metamosphosed from its rural
to its present urban pattern. The state has taken from him the burden
(and perhaps, the satisfaction) of protecting and educating his children.
Commercialized, or at least group activities have taken over his job as
entertainer and recreational director of the family. Religion is left to
the organized church, and even the economic function of the father
looms less important as wives take to the office, shop and the factory,
and teen-agers become at least partially self-supporting. As I said
a moment ago, about the only role that today's father successfully and
adequately fulfills is the biological role.
In the change to our urban pattern, the wife and mother has taken over
the bulk of those offices which the father has not surrendered to out-
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ranges from nine to twelve hours a day to weeks at a time for some
professional entertainers and travelling men. For the father employed
Paralleling this development, the mother has assumed more independence and in many instances has simply taken over the running of the
family and the home. The father turns over his check or a certain
amount of money and expects the mother to run the home, service all
accounts and not bother him about the details of household management.
In proportion as the mother takes over, the father seems to have lost
ment keep him from the family. Rarely is the family benefited much
by father's increased leisure. It is all too true that in the competition
for father's time, the child too frequently loses out to father's peer
group or to activities in which children can play little or no part. It
Life with father has been caricatured more often than it has been painted
as it actually is. The futility and helplessness of the father in his role
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erely limit the use of his authority. To demand obedience on the base
of withholding an inheritance is a useless threat today. To expect
compliance on the basis of being the head of the house is too unrealistic, for father headship is questioned. Once a father's word was all
sufficient. Now the children pay little or no attention to him. Both
extremes are unfortunate. Father's knowledge in an earlier society
was awe-inspiring to his children. Now, more often than not, the
education of his children is superior to his own.
Fatherhood is a role that should be embraced out of a feeling of love,
pursued in an atmosphere of confident awareness of means and ends,
and fulfilled in a spirit of devotion supported by a sense of high duty,
restricted only by the limitations of the human personality. It is the
father in our society who takes the initiative in establishing the home,
but surely his concern and interest should not stop there. He is intended by nature to be a teacher, a leader, a model, and a source, in
part, of moral and spiritual ideals.
In our equalitarian society, the democractic ideal has run wild. The
democratization of the wife and mother role has encouraged her to be
more assertive and independent. Our industrialized society has fostered this, divorcing the husband father more and more from domestic
concerns. The primary interest of the father should be the general
welfare of his family. Unless the father is willing to sacrifice practically all of what little leisure he has in the interests of the family,
he stands to lose all of his authority and much of his status as head of
the house. It does little good for the state to assign him legal power,
it does little good for society to grant him a certain status, if in practice he cannot or will not find time to implement them by genuine intere st.
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made by a wife and mother, who for all her concern about the family
least a father's place is in it. He may be important as the breadwinner; his position in the business and social world may enhance the
prestige of the family but his most important role is that of father.
All other roles are--or at least should be--secondary to this one.
nature has fitted him, more than woman, to conduct the external af-
fairs of the home. Even in those cultures which to anthropologists offer the best cases for matriarchy (female domination and control), male
leadership is still the rule. Dr. Cooper, the social anthropologist, concluded after analyzing the facts that, "all things considered, for the
The pendulum has swung from one extreme wherein the father wielded
absolute authority over the wife and child to the other wherein the father
is tolerated but scarcely looked up to. Both extremes have had their
day.
A happy mean is possible--nay, necessary. Marriage is a partnership; parenthood is a shared responsibility, a partnership that embraces the physical needs, that is concerned with the emotional adjust-
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of function. Only in this way will the family function as a unit. The
father must assume his responsibilities. He cannot remain semi-
detached from the family. He cannot feel that he has absolved himself of his responsibilities when he provides food, clothing and shelter. Those are the material aspects of fatherhood. The non-material
are more important and more neglected, maybe because they are intangible. But the father of the future, to hold his place inthe changing family picture, is going to have to take a more realistic attitude
towards his role, not let it deteriorate by indifference nor permit
it to go by default.
"A Man may work from sun to sun
But as a father, his work's never done."
Northwest Conference of Family Relations held at Gonzaga University April 5-7, 1956.
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