One thing that I stumbled across this week was an article in USA Today with the attached headline: Study: Real fathers fail to measure up to televised versions. Given the way an average TV father is portrayed, that's rather scary. This left me thinking of some contemporary Christian thinkers on the whole topic of marriage and family life, and how I'm not sure they always fit what's best for the family.
To quote a section of the article:
Many young people blame constant work demands — seldom portrayed on TV — for draining their fathers' energy and time from parenting, says Janice Kelly, a communications researcher at Marymount Manhattan College in New York. ... Comments invited during the study were revealing, Kelly says. One young person wrote: "My father works two jobs to support the family. I don't get to see him when he comes home, he's tired."
I seem to recall hearing some amongst self-proclaimed defenders of the family calling for a single-breadwinner family model at virtually all costs. This might mean them urging the father to take upon himself a second or even a third job on top of regular full-time employment. I'm not saying that the single breadwinner family model is a bad ideal, but that it doesn't seem to be the best in all situations. (And if you look in the Bible the woman described in Proverbs 31 does appear to be a businesswoman).
If you examine some of the problems regarding children leaving the church as they grow up, I'm wondering to what extent the enforcement of a single-breadwinner family ideal might be to blame for this. Consider the comment I quoted above about where one child complained that his father worked two jobs and thus never got to spend time with his children.
How would you expect a father working much more than "full time" might the relationship that they have with their children? Consider the immense impact that fathers have on their children's faith versus the , as mentioned in one article:
A 1994 Swiss study concluded, according to Anglican vicar Robbie Low, that "if a father does not go to church, no matter how faithful his wife's devotions, only one child in 50 will become a regular worshipper. If a father does go regularly, regardless of the practice of the mother, between two-thirds and three-quarters of their children will become churchgoers."
Food for thought. Feel free to disagree.
