Earth
Mother Enterprises |
The proper role for fathers is to provide for and protect everyone in the family. This role does not change because of divorce or because of the modern expansion of allowable activities for women. It certainly hasn't changed while society acknowledges that childless women should have no legal restraints on the kinds and quantity of work they do.
Because a child grows inside the mother, listens to her heart beat, adjusts to the rhythms of her day, hears a muffled version of the sounds her mother hears, shares some of her body chemistry, and participates with her in the high drama of childbirth, the relationship they share is forever unique and primary.
If, as nature intends, that child is breast-fed on demand for a half year exclusively, then we are describing a primary bond that extends for 15 months. If the mother continues, as even doctors advise, to breast-feed for a minimum of another six months, we are describing a minimally-accepted period of 21 months that mother and child are locked into each others' bodily and emotional patterns. Ideally, that tight connection will evolve into a gentle weaning over months or years, depending on the child's needs.
Psychologically, then, the mother's presence and her well-being represent the basis of survival and caring acceptance into the world. If the mother is inadequate, society owes to that child to do everything possible to make up for that inadequacy, while maintaining the primary bond. If the mother has trouble handling other responsibilities and the baby, then the other responsibilities should be taken over by others to whatever extent is necessary to free her up to joyfully be available to her little one.
If she is hopelessly abusive or neglectful, then a surrogate mother should be found as soon as possible to become a second-best base of security for the child, who will always be impaired to some degree for having lost the continuity with his or her birth mother. Whatever protected contact with the birth mother can be arranged is desirable, even if that mother no longer has a say in the child's life.
The father's role, from the time of conception, is to be protective of his children and the mother of those children and to provide for them. Those are the most immediate responsibilities he bears. As the children mature, he will find that he has an increasingly important interactive role in their lives, because he has the major task of preparing them to take care of themselves in the world. The opinion of a father often outweighs that of the mother in the eyes of children, because they find that he requires them to perform and to push themselves. The mother more typically offers unconditional acceptance, which leads them to take her more for granted. The disapproval of the father weighs particularly heavy on boys, who may labor their whole lives to live up to the expectations of their fathers. A father should hold high, but reasonable and individually shaped, standards for his children. His example makes a deep impression, as do his reactions to their efforts to please him.