Happy Father’s Day this weekend! Do ya need another tie?? (My husband just got two more, bless his heart.)
Father’s Day doesn’t seem to have the same type of commercialization push behind it that Mother’s Day does. In fact, it didn’t even become a nationwide holiday until 1972 — 58 years after President Woodrow Wilson made Mother’s Day official. That doesn’t mean we don’t need to celebrate dads, however, because we do! Dads matter.
I’m all about women’s empowerment and being valued equally — and I’m also all about men’s empowerment and valuing them equally. I love to see strong girls and women — and I also love to see strong boys and men. Valuing people is not a zero sum game.
Together, strong men and strong women make strong families. Strong families make for strong communities, then states, nations and the world.
Let me be clear: “Strong” doesn’t mean overbearing, brash, abusive, threatening or domineering. Instead, to me at least, it means that they are strong enough to cry, strong enough to be an equal partner with their spouse and strong enough to be a present and involved father with their children.
Our culture doesn’t always value that kind of strength in men.
Look at today’s entertainment offerings. Too often, we see men portrayed as either strict and demanding to the point of being abusive, or they are portrayed as weak, silly and dumb. In either case, they are almost always shown in an unequal relationship with their spouse, especially when it comes to parenting. They’re either the authoritative disciplinarian, barking orders they expect to be obeyed, or the incompetent father who can’t figure out which end of the baby to diaper.
That inaccurate portrayal does a disservice to good men everywhere.
A former president of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, David O. McKay, gave one of his best-known statements to the men of the church: “o other success can compensate for failure in the home.”
This post is an excerpt from a longer article I wrote for the Deseret News. You can read it here.
