Reflections on Fatherhood: A Review of David Blankenhorn's Fatherless America
David Wegener
Fatherhood in America is in trouble. David Blankenhorn, in his book, Fatherless America, has dissected the crisis, pointing to several critical problems. More and more children are now being brought up in homes where the father is absent. Many doubt the traditional roles of fathers. Some are even asking if fathers are really necessary.
Blankenhorn has developed a typology to describe our situation. The deadbeat dad doesn't pay his child support. He is a bad guy, a criminal who belongs in jail. The key issue here is not father absence, but money absence. His fatherhood is measured in dollars.
The visiting father is a shadow dad. He has left the home but he still stops by. He is a visitor: part father and part stranger. He pays his child support. He causes no trouble. He loves his kids. He wants to be a good father, but he's not around. He has been, in a sense, de-fathered. The fatherhood of the sperm father is completely biological. He is a one-act dad, who leaves no footprints and casts no shadow. He never shows up. He is the perfect father for those who think "that men in families are either unnecessary or part of the problem."1
The stepfather and the nearby guy are both different and similar. The stepfather is married to the mother. Thus, his commitment to her and her children goes a bit deeper than that of the nearby guy, who might be her boyfriend, a Little League coach or a Sunday school teacher. Yet both the stepfather and the nearby guy are substitute fathers. Biology plays no part here. Paternity is proximity. They fill the fatherhood vacuum created by deadbeat dads, visiting fathers and sperm fathers.2
These problems have led some to ask whether or not fathers are really necessary. They make so many mistakes; maybe their families would be better off without them. Clearly, we cannot go back to the model of the old father. He was a mean dictator with fangs, a controller. He yelled. He wielded authority. We can do without him. If fathers are to be retained at all, they must embrace the model of the new father. He "is nurturing. He expresses his emotions. He is a healer, a companion, a colleague. He is a deeply involved parent. He changes diapers."3
He may or may not be the primary breadwinner in the family, but that doesn't matter. He has moved beyond this and other arbitrary role distinctions based on gender. He is a really good guy, to the extent that he is still a guy. Actually, he's a lot like mom. We like him a lot. Call him the gender- neutral father.4
While Blankenhorn has done an excellent job of cataloguing the problems with fatherhood in America, unfortunately, when he comes to solutions, he is not helpful. Having embraced the cultural relativism of the day, he is left with opinions. Men in Denver think these are the traits of a good father. Those in Cleveland think this.5 Surely this is unacceptable. It does not meet the challenges of the day. We desperately need the sure Word of God, which cannot be relativized, or we will be left with focus groups. How does Holy Scripture define fatherhood? What are the duties of fathers according to the Bible? What follows is a brief survey of central Biblical teachings on fatherhood.
Fathers Must Look To God As Their Model
God is the archetypal Father. Paul prefaces his prayer for the Ephesian believers by saying, "For this reason, I bow my knees before the Father, from whom every family (patria) in heaven and on earth derives its name" (Eph. 3:14-15). Patria here can be rendered "family" or "lineage" or "fatherhood." God is the Father of all fatherhood. The very idea of fatherhood is found in the divine nature. Every human father is an imperfect reflection of our perfect heavenly Father.6 Hebrews 12:7-10 reinforces this idea. Parental discipline is modeled after the way God disciplines His adopted children. If you want to know what it means to be a good father, it is essential that you look at the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ. How does He relate with His only begotten Son? How does He deal with His adopted children?
Fathers Must Take Delight In Their Children
God the Father has loved His Son with an eternal love (Jn. 17:24). At the baptism of Jesus and on the Mount of Transfiguration, God thundered forth His love by saying, "this is My beloved Son, with whom I am wellpleased" (Matt. 3:17, 17:5; see also 12:18). Those who trust in Jesus are God's adopted children, the objects of His saving love (Rom. 5:8, Gal. 4:4-7, 1 Jn. 3:1; 4:9-10). If we want to follow the example of our heavenly father, we must express our love for our children. We can do this verbally when we tell them we're proud of them, that they are pleasing to us, that we have con- fidence in them. No one can overestimate the power of a father's approval. We can do this by our actions when we choose to spend time with our children, doing things they enjoy (1 Jn. 3:18). We can also do this when we are considerate of our children, by not provoking them to anger.7 Finally, fathers express their love for their children by providing for their needs (1 Tim. 5:8). This does not mean a guarantee to pay for their college education. The context of 1 Timothy emphasizes providing for the basic needs (food, clothing and shelter) of one's extended family (1 Tim. 6:7-10).
Fathers Must Discipline And Instruct Their Children
Implicit in the Biblical command for fathers to discipline and instruct their children (Eph. 6:4), is the fact that fathers have authority over their children. God the Father is the author of life. All people are His creation and He has the final and ultimate authority over us all. Yet He has delegated His authority to fathers. We are to regard our offspring as gifts from the Lord (Ps. 127:3), put under our authority while they are young.
Discipline is corrective. It seeks to bring about a change in the one being disciplined. It has accomplished its purpose when the change has been made. Again, God the Father has set the pattern for fatherly discipline (Heb. 12:5-11). The goal of discipline is to restore full fellowship between a father and his child. Though the kind of discipline that is administered will vary according to the age of the child, certain over-arching principles apply. The discipline must not be done in anger (Jas. 1:20, Gal. 6:1). It should be painful, but must not inflict damage (Heb. 12:11). Give instruction while you are administering the discipline. Tell the child what the Bible says about why he was disciplined. When the discipline is finished, there should be a full restoration of fellowship between the father and his child. The subject that brought on the discipline is now closed.8
Fathers must not only discipline their children; they must also instruct them. It is our great privilege to lead them in prayer and the study of God's word (Deut. 6:4-9). We must point them to Christ and introduce them to our Savior. We need to help them develop Christian virtues such as, honesty, dependability, hard work, kindness, purity, politeness, thankfulness, patience, humility, self-control and self-denial. This instruction should be given in a number of ways. Perhaps the most powerful means of teaching is taken up in the next point.
Fathers Must Set An Example For Their Children
Children imitate their fathers. Christians are called to imitate our heavenly Father (Eph. 5:1). And imitation goes on every day in our homes as a natural fact of life. Recently, I got a pretty bad sunburn from a day spent at the pool. That evening, my three year old son came into my room and lay down next to me and said, "Dad, I wish I had sunburn just like you." He wants to be like me in every way.
Children will learn from their father how to relate to God. Is it important to develop a relationship with Him? Should He be approached only occasionally, in a major crisis, or flippantly, as if He were a buddy, or reverently, as if He were the holy God that He is? The father will be the model.
How should a husband relate to his wife? Harshly, taking out his frustrations from work on her? Or tenderly leading her, as Christ leads the church? Do you want to teach your children to honor you as their father? Well, how are you showing honor and respect for your own father?
Children will learn by the example we set. It will do little good to try to teach the Christian virtues mentioned above unless these virtues are evident and increasing in our own lives.
Fathers Must Be Men
This point cries out for emphasis in a day when more and more Americans believe that fathers are the major part of the problem in families and can therefore be banished from the home with impunity. Just as men and women are different, so a father will relate to his children differently from their mother. First, just as God is the One who first loved us, so fathers must be the initiators in their relationships with their children (1 Jn. 4:19). Many fathers are paralyzed by passivity. In countless ways, a father must seek out his children and be the initiator, rather than the responder, in their relationship.
Second, a father's love is sacrificial (Eph. 5:25-27). He is willing to lay down his life for his family. In a way, he does this every day as he earns a living to provide for their needs. Masculine love is strong and is demonstrated by actions. Third, just as our heavenly Father tests our faith so that we grow spiritually, so fathers should set out challenges for their children so that they grow and mature (Deut. 8:2, 16). This does not mean that he puts temptations in their path (Jas. 1:13-14). And it certainly does not mean that he does not accept and love them. On the contrary, it is precisely because he loves them that he allows their faith and character to be tested and strengthened as they mature toward adulthood.9
Finally, fathers must train their sons to be masculine and their daughters to be feminine. They must inculcate bravery and initiating, sacrificial love in their sons by teaching, example and practice. Fathers must train their daughters to be nurturers and to respond to the initiating love of a strong and worthy man. They can do this by encouragement and direction, and by their own relationship with their daughter.10
Many historians presuppose that the family is not a natural unit, but one which is socially constructed.11 Similarly, sociologists assume that the meaning of fatherhood is essentially a cultural invention. The way a man should father his children is basically shaped by the society in which he lives and this will vary from culture to culture.12
In this brief survey, we have seen that Scripture gives many transcultural norms that tell us what fatherhood is and how men should father their children.
May God give us men who rely on His grace and step forward to respond to their high calling as fathers.
Endnotes
1 David Blankenhorn, Fatherless America: Confronting Our Most Urgent Social Problem (New York: HarperCollins, 1995), p. 172.
2 Summarized from ibid., pp. 124-98.
3 Ibid., p. 96.
4 Summarized from ibid., pp. 65-123.
5 Ibid., pp. 201-21.
6 See F.F. Bruce, "Name", in New International Dictionary of New Testament Theology, ed. Colin Brown (Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 1976), vol. 2:655, J. Armitage Robinson, Commentary on Ephesians (reprint ed., Grand Rapids: Kregel, 1979), p. 84, and Athanasius, "Four Discourses against the Arians," in Select Treatises of S. Athanasius in Controversy with the Arians, trans. John Henry Newman, Library of the Fathers, vol. 19 (Oxford: John Henry Parker, 1844), 1:23-24, pp. 214-15.
7 Fathers provoke their children to anger when we make unreasonable demands on them; when we show favoritism to one child over another, as Jacob did with Joseph (Genesis 37 ff.); when we subject them to sarcasm and ridicule; when we fail to apologize to them when we are wrong; and when we are wrongfully absent from the home.
8 See Douglas Wilson, Standing on the Promises: A Handbook of Biblical Childrearing (Moscow, ID: Canon Press, 1997).
9 See Weldon M. Hardenbrook, Missing from Action: Vanishing Manhood in America (Nashville: Nelson, 1987), pp. 150-62.
10 Elisabeth Elliot, "The Essence of Femininity," in Recovering Biblical Manhood and Womanhood, ed. John Piper and Wayne Grudem (Wheaton: Crossway, 1991), pp. 394-99.
11 See, e.g., Merry E. Wiesner, "Family, Household and Community," in Handbook of European History, 1400-1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, eds. Thomas A. Brady, Heiko A. Oberman, James D. Tracy (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1994), vol. 1, p. 51.
12 Blankenhorn, p. 3.
