Sermon: The Changing Roles of Fathers

The Changing Roles of Fathers
“You, O LORD, are our Father; Our Redeemer from Everlasting is Your name.”
( Isaiah 63:16b )
A Message by Rev Dr Stanley Lim on 14 & 15 June 2008

Introduction: What type of father did you have? It’s a difficult question to answer. All fathers are different and we all recognize that. There is no single style of fathering that can be prescribed for everyone. In fact, there are as many different types of fathers as there are fathers. Each one inevitably brings his own unique set of gifts, qualities, strengths and weaknesses to the role. As we look out over the whole realm of what it means to be a father, certain patterns begin to emerge.

You have with you the Fathering Roles Inventory, a simple exercise to help clarify the roles of fathers. Not only will it help you learn what the roles are; it will also help you understand where your father was strong and where he was weak.

Different roles are typically more crucial at different stages of the child’s development. Ideally, every father should be able to play all four roles, and be able to emphasize the one that is most needed in the life of each individual child at that point. However, in reality, the challenges of parenting today distract us from our focus and many of us require gentle reminders in order to play our roles well. Let’s look now at the characteristics of each of the four roles.

I. The Nurturer – This role is of primary importance to the child between birth and age five.
Nurturers have a deep-rooted “centredness” within themselves that imparts strength to those around them. Their children feel secure – valued – because by being receptive to their children’s emotions, nurturers validate a core part of their children’s identities. Your ability to connect emotionally with your child at this stage brings a bonding that makes them feel safe and secure. This will inevitably set firm limits for the child to draw up his/her own boundaries at a later developmental stage.

II. The Lawgiver – This role is of primary importance to the child between the ages of six and twelve
The role of the father as the Lawgiver is to model for his family the ability to approach life with competence and confidence. This role will generate self-respect in the child. When lawgiving is balanced with nurturing, a father helps his children learn to make decisions about right and wrong and this in turn demonstrates his sense of integrity and morality by the way he relates to his children. In his role as a lawgiver, it is not just a matter of “following orders”. When it comes to rule and standards of behavior, children operate on a “show me, don’t tell me” basis. For the son, the lawgiver should relate to him openly and honestly. For the daughter, the lawgiver needs to lovingly appreciate her abilities in order to help her develop confidence in her femininity.

At this stage of life, both sons and daughters tend to idealize dad. He is their hero. He can do no wrong. If he does do wrong, their tendency will be to deny the weakness and failure they see. They may instead focus on themselves as the source of the problems. When fathers do not function well in this lawgiving role, children usually grow up to have significant problems relating to all authority figures.

III. The Warrior/Protector – This role is of primary importance to the child between the ages of twelve and eighteen.
The word warrior is chosen because the stage of adolescence so often seems like a battle, for both parents and children. Adolescence begins, not when the child turns 13 but when he or she enters puberty. The physical changes that occur in puberty are accompanied by hormonal changes, emotional changes and attitudinal changes. Social and cultural factors are also thrown into a mix as the child enters the teenage world.

At this stage, fathers need to know how to fight for his children in two senses. First, he needs to stand with them, fighting on their side as it were, confronting the confusing and frustrating changes that threaten to overwhelm both him and them. Second, he needs to fight against the forces that try to draw his children away from or even place them in opposition to himself. Some of these forces come from the surrounding culture. Some arise within the adolescent. Others arise from within the father.

In order to fight for his children, the father must stay involved with them. Can he let his relationship with his daughter evolve as she changes from a little girl into a young lady? Can he give his son room to become a man? There are crucial questions for the warrior to grapple with.

At the heart of the warrior role is the father’s ability to be aggressive. The warrior father will channel his aggressiveness with his children so that he can actively engage and challenge them, but without always needing to win. He can take pleasure when his children master new skills- even when they surpass him. The warrior’s goal must not be to win, but to help his children sharpen their skills. Part of the father’s task in his role is to prepare his child to battle effectively with life, whether in business or at home. Some fathers fail in the warrior role because all their aggressiveness is channeled into their work, leaving little time or energy for involvement with their children.

IV. The Spiritual Mentor – This role is of primary importance to the older child as he or she moves into adulthood.
It is important that the stage of adolescence come to a conclusion. The spiritual mentor helps with his children’s transition into adult life. He draws his children into the future. He helps them dream. He sees and helps his children see, the transcendent things in life; he also sees and helps his children see, where he and they stand in relation to these things.

It is at this stage, parents in our culture typically have trouble “letting go” of their children, allowing them to become individuals in their own right.

Conclusion: Each role comes into special prominence during a particular stage of the child’s life. With the exception of the nurturing role, which is shared with the mother, each of the roles is a unique contribution that the father makes to the child’s development. Even though one role is prominent during each stage of the child’s development, all four roles are important to some extent at every stage. Whenever, one role is overdeveloped or used to the exclusion of the others, the children will suffer to some degree. If the father is not there, the mother can fill in some of the gap created by his absence, but she cannot be the lawgiver, the warrior/protector or the spiritual mentor. These are roles fulfilled only by the father.

If dad isn’t there, and if mom cannot fill these roles, what can be done to fill the gap? I believe this where the extended family or the family of God, provides an important substitute. Uncles, grandfathers, older men from the church can help to fill in the gap. No human father has ever been perfect at performing all four roles at all times. Every father will almost certainly have one role that is dominant – the one he feels most comfortable with, the one that comes most naturally to him.

Hopefully in looking at these four roles, while looking back on our own childhood, understanding our father’s unique strengths and weaknesses will help us understand some of the strong and weak points in our own lives.

Think for a moment about your father:
· Which was the dominant role in your father’s parenting style? How do you think his parenting style has added to your life as an adult?
· Which role or roles were most noticeably missing from your father’s approach? How do you think this has affected your development? How does it affect you now?
· What did you miss most in your relationship with your father?