In praise of fathers

The year's Father's Day passed without much fanfares, though football fans would quickly add "not without the cursed vusuvelas". The World Cup tournament is drowning everything and everyone. Father's Day was just one in a long series of victims that lost much of the media coverage that usually highlight it, though it lost none of the commercial hype feeding on it. One hopes that Father's Day did not suffer the same fate on the level of families.

Our newly appointed Commissioner for Children, Helen D'Amato, in a statement encouraged fathers to take a more active role in their children's upbringing, while expressing her appreciation for those who do. "Unfortunately, the role of the father is one which has not always been given the acknowledgement which it deserves, given the strong association of the children's upbringing with maternal care," Ms D'Amato said.

A similar sentiment was echoed at the same time but on the other side of the Atlantic. Marriage and family therapist Mitchell Rosen, of California, editorial in the Riverside Press-Enterprise about "Father's Day and the importance of fathers" actively involved in the lives of their children.

The point of Mitchell Rosen's editorial is that children benefit tremendously from exposure to positive male adult role models; ideally, that would be the child's father. Noting the fact that men's child-rearing styles differ from those of mothers, he said that this helps children have a better rounded upbringing. Psychologists say that children who feel valued by both parents often have a greatly enhanced self-image.

The role of fathers in the family is the subject of a report released last December by the Social Affairs Committee of our Parliament. This Committee, under the able chair of Edwin Vassallo, collectively penned a report which started by discussion "fatherlessness" in single parent families but ended by discussing "fatherlessness" in families where the father, though living in the family, is not really present. People were given up to the end of May to send in their comments. I am sure that the Committee would look at the comments posted on this blog even though the official consultation period has elapsed.

During the last quarter of 2009, the Committee listened to a number of experts who supplied it with opinions, statistics and research. Let me reproduce some statistics. The number of one-parent households has doubled in just four years. In 2003 there 1720 but the number went up to 3650 in 2007. In 2008 one fourth of births were outside of marriage and just under 9% had "unknown" fathers. As expected more, one-parent households, live in the risk of poverty than two parent households.

There are hardly any empirical Malta-based studies to document the effects of fatherlessness. Experts who addressed the Parliamentary Committee presented the results of studies in the United States and in Great Britain. The figures are frightening. Children do suffer a lot!

I think the Parliamentary Committee was quite justified in shifting its attention to those family situations when the father is there but in actual fact does not make his presence felt. Sometimes this is done for work reasons and/or because the role of the father in the unbringing is underestimated. You find fathers, to-day even both parents, working a lot for the welfare of the family but in so doing they would be abandoning the family. There was a myth about the so-called quality time. I think that there could not be any quality time unless and until there is enough time and physical presence. Many times quality time is nothing but a sophistically called alienation.

The importance of the presence of the father in the upbringing of children is to-day appreciated much more than before. Experts told the Social Affiars Committee that there are stages in the development of children e.g. adolescence when the presence and contribution of the father is more important than that of the mother.

What do you think of the role of the father in a family? Now that the role of breadwinner is not the sole domain of the father do you feel that family structures and relationships should be different from those of yesteryear? Are Maltese fathers responding fairly well to the new challenges they are facing?

The Ambassador's father

While researching for this topic I was lucky to come across contribution by the USA Ambassador Douglas Kmiec to the 18 June edition of the online version of the Catholic magazine, America. Ambassador Kmiec wrote movingly about the death of his father in June.

While offering my condolences to Ambassador Kmiec I am pleased to offer you the conclusion of the wonderfully written piece.

"My father died a few weeks ago in home hospice care in Florida. To both his sons at his side the Father's Day lesson is inescapable: As we check our voice mails, BlackBerries and inboxes, let us not be too busy to notice all those who, like my father, freely give of their dreams. By the Cross and Resurrection, Christ offers us a vision of unconditional love. The dreams of men are frequently their Christ-like

offers of love. We can't lose in taking them up. Why? Listen to my father's voice, now fallen silent but forever clearly heard by the family and friends who took the time to share his dreams: "because we have faith, courage and enthusiasm." With those qualities, Dad, we are confident your dreams of eternity are being fulfilled."

Do find time to read the whole piece on www.americamagazine.org/blog/blog.cfm?blog_id=2

The Three Lions

This piece was posted a few hours after it usually is posted. I wanted to watch England playing Slovenia to comment on the result. I planned to post immediately after the match. However, the result asked for celebration which took longer than I expected.

Tomorrow the "others" have a decisive match. I hope they ....

I will not continue that sentence, since I not wish this blog to be regaled all kinds of insults. However I still hope they ..... You know what I mean and who I am referring to, I guess.