Step-family Talk

Yesterday was Father’s Day and it has had me thinking about what it means to be a father and what it means to be a man. Since I started writing for this blog I’ve been slowly learning about a community of men out there that are speaking up and speaking out about fatherhood and it’s encouraging to see. I notice that the men writing these blogs throughout the community have all sorts of different backgrounds, but they all seem to have one thing in common, they all enjoy being a father. You can tell they do, it comes out in the way they describe their children, their wives, and their lives. I’m not sure the reason that each of them feels the need to write about their experiences, but I am glad they are doing it. My reason for writing this is that I get even more joy from being a father by talking about it. I learn more as I reflect, question, discuss and share the experience and the more I learn about being a dad the more I like it. I imagine the same is true for the other dads that are out there writing.

There is another reason I like seeing blogs about fathering written by fathers. It gives testament and validity to the importance of being a father. It also gives the world a glimpse at an important aspect of what it means to be a man. Being a father and being a man are two important concepts for me not just because the implications of both are important to my children, but because I see the devastating affect that the absence of these two aspects can have on society. I have the privilege of working with an extremely challenged section of society. I teach children that have dropped out of school and are now trying to recover credits and get a diploma before it’s too late for them. Many of my students are on probation, some have been to prison, some have children of their own, some have drug habits, and all of them were unable to cope with a traditional school setting. One final trait that these students share is that most of them did not have a father or father figure in their lives.

Most of my students, will tell you their grown. But, if you ask them what that means they will respond with something about having achieved a certain age or having spawned a child. For the girls in my class, it means that they are raising their children on their own—yet few of them know how and even less know how to model responsible behavior to the children. For the boys in my class its even worse, they feel they deserve some sort of recognition for having several baby’s mommas. For them, the responsibility ends at the moment of conception. There are a few that have some involvement in their children’s life after the child is born, but again they don’t know what their doing or how to model responsible behavior. I know a lady that has worked with this population of students and had a great response to “I’m grown!” Whenever some student says that she responds with a smile as says, “Oh really? Let me see it then.” At this point the student gets a bit nervous; she lets them sweat for a second then asks them to show her their insurance card. She tells them a real man carries an insurance card.

I love her concept of a man. It’s all summed up in one simple card. Her concept of a real man has nothing to do with how many tough they are, how big of a player they are, how much money they make. It’s all comes down to a card that says I’m responsible for myself and my family. This week I’m going to explore what it means to be a man and a father and why it is important that men everywhere step up to those titles.