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Commentary

By Liz Quirin

Belated Happy Father's Day

Many people celebrated Father’s Day over the weekend, and fathers received all sorts of greetings and gifts from their offspring to show their affection and their admiration of the men whom they call “father.”

Fatherhood has certainly changed over the years. These days many fathers take as much responsibility for changing diapers and carting youngsters to a doctor’s appointment as mothers do. Hats off to those guys. Many of them take off work to spend a day with a sick child instead of it always being a mother who shoulders that responsibility.
If we were really a “family friendly” country, no one would work beyond 3 or 3:30 p.m. any day of the week because that’s when a school day finishes. Otherwise, we should change school hours to mirror work hours so everyone keeps the same schedule. Never a fan of year round school when I was teaching, I have changed my mind. Along with year round school, work schedules should be adjusted so that everyone has the same vacations and time off. We wouldn’t need to shuttle children between schools and day cares and latch key programs, even if some of them provide wonderful care.

Realizing this will probably not happen, we do see these changes in family schedules to include dads in primary care of their children. That has to be a positive step for everyone in the family. Having special time with dad to go fishing, or to a ball game or just pick up sticks in the yard will build in time to strengthen a relationship between a child and a father.

In the early days — sometime after covered wagons and before computers — we didn’t have all these extracurricular activities for kids, nor did we have parents running from baseball to gymnastics to dance to whatever, eating dinner on the run, just trying to make it safely to the next place on the list. We played sports with neighborhood kids, and our gymnastics were more like cartwheels in the yard than at a studio.

Dads played catch with kids after work, and maybe the family gathered together for a picnic and a game on a weekend without uniforms or age requirements, and really just for fun. Maybe dads were tired, but the ones who cared, pulled themselves together to spend time with their kids. Maybe it was easier to spend time with kids in the old days when they had no iPods, no cell phones, no electronic toys into which they disappeared.

Whether you’re a first-time dad still learning to change diapers and juggle toys and juice cups with only one hand, or a seasoned professional, now maybe a grandpa who knows the ropes, a belated Happy Father’s Day to you all. You know how much your dads meant to you, and how much you mean to your children and grandchildren. God knows how much all of you mean in the lives of those you love and those you care for every day.