Children Need Their Fathers Too
This is one of my favourite pictures of my father and me. He taught me to ride a bicycle which he and my mother gifted me for my 7th birthday. I remember him saying that guard wheels are useless and to learn to get my balance and ride. And so he held me till I got my balance and learned to ride on my own. I still ride bicycles – something I enjoy immensely and I am very grateful for.
I have been having chats with a few people and it is sad that so many of our generation still think that as long as the father provides financially, he does not need to be involved in the children’s lives. It’s not just money. Money can never make up for presence, engagement and showing you care. Stability is built on the foundations set at home and fathers are crucial for this. Even though my parents divorced when we were children, they were still very much involved in our lives and my father’s lessons in life, I still value. And it’s not like he was sitting at home on a pot of gold – he worked in the corporate sector after the Army, was director and CEO of companies and still made time for us.
Today we have a mania to work like mad dogs on a highway to hell and the result is that many children have all the material comforts their parents never had, with zero stability. It’s nothing to be proud of. In this rat race, it is still the father who is expected to be away from home where the mother is expected to drop everything and be the caregiver of the kid. This conventional model does not work and most often disadvantages both parents in the process and the child suffers.
Sure, single mother households are common and many have survived through those, yet, I would not glamourise it and it is not at all easy and has a lot of repercussions which few realise and most don’t address.
So fathers, next time please do spend time with your children – as a former CEO once told me, if a manager is working late, he cannot manage his time and should leave. Work never ends, but your kids’ childhood does. Don’t be a shadow they keep chasing.
