More Fathers Please

To all fathers who are raising children in the most important job a man can do, my appreciation and a Happy Father's Day. 

Juan Williams tells us just how important in The Tragedy of America's Disappearing Fathers.

As we celebrate Father's Day tomorrow, we should reflect upon a sad fact: It is now common to meet young people in our big city schools, foster-care homes and juvenile centers who do not know their dads. Most of those children have come face-to-face with their father at some point; but most have little regular contact with the man, or have any faith that he loves or cares about them.

When fatherless young people are encouraged to write about their lives, they tell heartbreaking stories about feeling like "throwaway people." In the privacy of the written page, their hard, emotional shells crack open to reveal the uncertainty that comes from not knowing if their father has any interest in them. The stories are like letters to unknown dads – some filled with imaginary scenes about what it might be like to have a dad who comes home and puts his arm around you or plays with you.

They feel like they've been thrown away, Mr. Myers says, because "they don't have a father to push them, discipline them, and they give up trying to succeed . . . they don't see themselves as wanted." A regular theme of their stories is that they feel safer in a foster care home or juvenile detention center than on the outside, because they have no father to hold together the family. There is no one at home

Those who had a father around remember the lessons learned from our fathers.
collected by The Art of Manliness which should be mandatory reading for those lost boys with absent or unknown fathers who must imagine what being a man is about and father themselves.

The truest happiness is in self sacrifice in love like this father, Dick Hoyt, in Team Hoyt    Absolutely amazing love story between father and son.

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