Fatherhood demands of us a sense of personal responsibility that requires conscious and deliberate attention to the formation of home environments and values-modelling through which we create the future of and for our children.

While we have heard all the ' fathering and parenting jargon’ time and time again, is not just knowing these concepts and ideas about healthy family life, but it is about living these principles on an consistent and sustained basis.

More than from their educational and schooling influences, our children's sense of self and life aspirations and their responses to the challenges of the future, significantly depend on what we as parents have demonstrated to them during their delicate years of loving nesting in the homes we provide.

Our children's understanding of their own future marital relationships, their sense of what is to be considered as acceptable or unacceptable behaviours in their relationships with others in society, their work ethic, sense of nationalism, attitudes to ethnic differences, social and legal justice, their management of time and money, their relationship with God and God's creation, are all formed, influenced and affected by our parental styles and messages.

That is why we have to be careful, conscious and constantly reflective of our impact as parents. That is why as fathers we must embrace the gift of fatherhood with deliberate and intelligent choices of attitudes and mature behaviours, knowing that how we live, what we celebrate as our values and what we sow in our homes, will grow and bear fruit in and through our children.

Building balanced homes and families

Our children are our ‘immortality’. We will live forever through them. We will create tomorrow through them. What an awesome responsibility.

What we live, how we live, the values we project, the relationships we develop or destroy, the love we radiate, our sense of hope and purpose and our own demonstrated spirituality, is our eternal legacy through our children.

Our children expect that their fathers will ensure stability, security and protection in their homes. They expect that their fathers would be moulding influences, teaching them about, and guiding them through, the dangers and challenges of the external world.

They require that as fathers, as parents, we respectfully listen to their issues concerns and assist to resolve difficulties. They expect that fathers will accompany mothers to PTA meetings, regularly share meals with them, laugh, play, have fun with them, celebrate their birthdays and family joys and sorrows and along with their mothers establish rules and disciplinary codes for the family.

Our parental language, while often formative and disciplinary, has to be careful and not be abusive and emotionally destructive. No one, not even fathers, are expected to be perfect beings.

It is healthy that our spouses and children also see us as individuals reaching, even sometimes struggling, for higher goals and ideals in career, workplace engagements, earning capacity and relationships - including our relationship with God, the greater Father of all.

Our country needs as men and as fathers to stop and reflect on our critical role and responsibilities in the building of balanced homes and families, which will become foundations for a more stable national society based on hope for the future, healthy lifestyles and authentic spiritual values. 

We wish all fathers a wonderful Fathers Day and God's blessings for us to become the Saint Joseph of our homes.